


25 Grains Blue Skies

by Starborn_Valley



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: ...and "It", ...depending on how you define "Fix", An Entirely Self-Indulgent Excess of Dream Sequences, Baby's First Fanfic, Body Horror, Fix-It, IT Chapter 3 : Rebellion, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Canon, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, but it's okay if you haven't read the book it should still make sense, edgelord storytelling, i dont really go into it bc im focused on richie pov but imagine mike/bill in the bg, i.e. mention of boners, im too much a coward to write explicit rip maybe someday, lots of book references & easter eggs, unless you don't know about the turtle i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starborn_Valley/pseuds/Starborn_Valley
Summary: Eddie died. Richie disagrees.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	1. Anaphora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
> 
> Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
> 
> Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
> 
> Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. ”
> 
> \- W. H. Auden

_In the dream, the Scorpion sat, lithe and easy, on the Turtle’s back. The Turtle, unbothered, waded dully in a slow swim-shamble across the lake. Upon the further embankment, there was a teeming desolation: a few scant figures scattered about and moving in silhouette about the verdant, fertile land. The Turtle seemed in no rush to reach that shore. The Scorpion was content to aggress. Its pointed tail, lashing out, relentless and insistent, was somehow almost lazy in its steady, unchallenged pace._

_On the Turtle’s back there also stood sheep: a massive flock, meaning to meander and yet largely still, impeded by the sheer crowding bustle of tightness that was the shell’s limited perimeter. As the Scorpion’s tail continued to stamp down, clicking like a stapler as it fell, it punched through sheep after sheep, impaling them on its stinger, then flinging them aside into the hungrily indifferent waters below._

_A lone human stood among the throng, looking upon the scene, incredulous._

_“Hey, Turts, any plans to do something about all that?” Richie Tozier drawled at the god._

_“Hmm, well…” the Turtle hummed after a beat, “...It’s really not my place.”_

_“Huh, seriously?” The man snorted. “You - and I’m saying this literally - are ‘the place.’ They’re standing on your back, dude.”_

_“Perhaps, perhaps,” it mused, another screeching bray echoing out over the water, blood streaking above the Turtle in a perfect rainbow-arc before the creature plunked onto the watery surface. “But have you not considered: is it not the sheep’s place to evade all present dangers? Should this be my failure? After all, I grant the land upon which they roam.”_

_Richie’s well worn sneakers squeaked weakly against the shell like cartilage over bone. “Are you kidding? C’mon, man, there’s no room to move, it’s a clown car up here. Might notice if you looked back once in a while.”_

_The dream (really? a dream? richie, you should know better than that by now) had been merciful thus far, insofar as it allowed Richie to retain a form with some handy opposable thumbs as opposed to rigid hooves, lanky legs stretching over his fluffy companions as he knit and weaved through the throng. Nonetheless, Richie had to keep moving even as he talked, an eye to the Scorpion’s moves, at least until he determined how much of this was a vision and how much his reality. (oh, right, reality, how quaint. you remember how that was going, don’t you, richie? maybe this world would be better off for you. maybe you should stick around.)_

_“I am old, child, and it hurts my neck to turn. You’ll understand once you’re my age,” it chuckled, the incomprehensibly old fuck, “And besides, the shore is not behind, but yet ahead, child… Ahead…”_

_Richie was sweating through his plain dark t-shirt now, panting slightly with the exertion. “Yeah, and you’re taking your sweet time getting there, huh? We all don’t have aeons to our name, you might be surprised to know.” He wiped his brow, flicked some perspiration away. “Maybe you’re just killing time here, like it better in the water, like that you move faster here.”_

_He stumbled and slid as he reached the far sloping sides of the shell, forced to double back toward the center, and the Scorpion, to keep his bearings. Meanwhile the other sheep stood strangely steady even on those outer edges, reminding Richie of those surreal photos of goats standing erect on precarious near-vertical mountainsides. At the time he had compared those to his own wretched coordination, as evidenced by repeated falls from gym-class balance-beams, face into the mat, glasses against his eyes, and the subsequent imaginings of those screens shattering, shards into his corneas. He nudged his glasses up by the bridge._

_“Do not take me for selfish, small one. I am simply remaining impartial, as is my duty.”_

_“Okay, first off? ‘Doo-ty.” Heh. And second-- literally who is your boss, man? Who sets that precedent? You’re a cosmic whateveramagig, no one’s TELLING you to do SQUAT.” Broad hands grasped for the closest sheep, clinging desperately to its wool for a moment’s balance and then realizing his weight was pulling it down rather than the other way around. He let it go, and seconds later the dread tail skewered it, inches from his face, red streaking Richie’s arms. Bile burned his throat. (ohh please oh please don’t vomit on the cute fluffy creatures, tozier.)_

_“Let me phrase it another way, then,” the Turtle cleared its throat, pausing and bobbing its head slightly as though to shake its semantic etch-a-sketch. “I choose to remain impartial. Neutrality is peace.”_

_Richie guffawed, bitter, slapping his own thighs, a sardonic edge to his voice once he found it. “Oh, of course. Of COURSE god is a fucking centrist. Yeah, I would enter the realm of timeless defied cosmology only to find it’s just moderates versus fascists, same as our own kinky two-party system. Jesus-please-us what did I fucking expect.”_

_The Turtle was silent at this, either oblivious to the state of modern American politics, or disagreeing with his assessment of it, or, more likely, completely indifferent. (‘impartial,’ as mr.turtle put it.) In the droning silence Richie continued to grapple for purchase, before spotting a small, unsteady sheep nearby. He began to reach for it, but its frontmost leg appeared broken, or sprained, the creature’s three functional limbs struggling to evenly distribute its weight._

_But there was something uncanny about the creature. If he didn’t know better, Richie might have thought it was staring directly at him-- like, really looking, knowingly even, its huge dark eyes petrifying him in place ala deer-in-headlights. He felt an inexplicable fondness for the critter then and wanted, if not to support himself, rather to shield it. And despite its injury those eyes looked almost… confident? Proud? (was that a weird thing to see in a sheep? geez, get it together man. this turtle-verse is seriously scrambling your eggs.) But before Richie had the chance to herd his assessment on appropriate sheep adjectives, this selfsame creature was struck, bled, flung._

_Time passed slow for a moment, then, each millisecond tracked with painstaking scrutiny. Blood sheathed half of his glasses and spurt blindingly into one eye until he saw red._

_Richie quaked until he fell to his knees, crackling with age and rage on the way down. He tried to steady himself by grasping at the ridges of the shell, but it was altogether too smooth, sanded down by time, almost soft._

_(ker-plunk)_

_Richie, miraculously, didn’t vomit. He screamed._

_“You… YOU USELESS FUCKING REPTILE! WHY, HUH? WHY CREATE A UNIVERSE IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO EVEN PROTECT IT?” He got up, to his feet, fists bunched, lifted up with a livid buoyancy that seemed to enter from outside him._

_“I DON’T CARE IF ALL OF IT, IF THIS WHOLE FUCKING UNIVERSE WAS AN ACCIDENT, TAKE FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT OR GO TO HELL! THAT’S WHERE YOU LEFT US, AFTER ALL, WHEN YOU DECIDED YOU WERE ABOVE OUR FUCKING PAYGRADE! WHAT DID WE WORK SO HARD FOR, HUH? ALL OF US LOSERS, PROTECTING YOU? YOU?! AND FOR WHAT? HUH? TELL ME.” The Turtle seemed to ignore him, impatient, even bored. Richie thought of a homeless man, raving in the streets for a bit of change, only to be peevishly passed by some Wall Street brat, claiming nothing to give with a wallet full of Benjamins._

_“SORRY, AM I BORING YOU? YOU--! YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK IT! I WISH--” Richie fumed, considering his next words, before grimacing and shoving on. It didn’t really matter anyway. “I WISH WE’D KILLED YOU TOO!”_

_The whole dream shuddered then, flickering with an occulting light._

_Richie moved once more to cling vainly at the rigid shell beneath him while it shook, fingers scrabbling uselessly at its surface again. For a moment Richie thought he was actually being thrown off in protest for this outburst of apparent blasphemy. But it wasn’t just the Turtle-- everything shook, figures in a snowglobe. In the shuffling chaos, Richie was flung, flying, belly-flopping onto the water’s surface, then floating down, down down down, into a miasmic dark._

_Somehow, he could see there. With strange clarity, even, eyes inexplicably unbothered by the water’s sting, even as his glasses sat somewhere beneath the waves. Breathing, however, posed a problem. Richie held his breath tightly, having managed to seize one indolent gulp of air before going under, but it wouldn’t last. His throat was getting pinprick tight, and he could almost feel his own face turning purple._

_It was then that he spotted the aspirator._

_The last time Richie had used it was on the lawn of Neibolt Street, the thickly-knotted wheatgrass and rancid-smelling sunflowers nodding along as though in grim approval. Eddie granted it to him without protest, and Richie tried not to think of it as a roundabout kiss as he took a deep shuddering breath, simply wanting to feel Eddie’s sort of peace._

_As he closed his lips around it now, (woah, richie’s blasting off! yeah, eddie should have said that to him, back then, dealt some of the flack richie was always giving him) he felt his lungs pump up like bike tires. When he released the nozzle, he found himself oddly sated, as though he still had air, or as though he had gills, mouth tingling with a lingering camphor-flavor twinge. That air stayed with him as he continued to drift down into the opaque depths of the lake. Looking up, he couldn’t see the Turtle above anymore. Or the Scorpion, for that matter, only ill-lit bubbles like dark eggs, flitting up behind him and up toward the surface. (see, not that hard to crane your neck, old-timer! and this coming from a middle-aged man whose lumbar has never once been supported.)_

_Looking down, however, he began to see… well, something. Spires, maybe? Bones? Prison bars? A sort of grey, grooved, bamboo-like wall seemed to be spiking out of the depths. Beyond it a dull glow bubbled and shuddered and gleamed, a living light amongst the ebon ichor._

_And then, a figure._

_Richie’s throat grew tight again but this time he ignored it. He wouldn’t mind dying here, after all, finally, with him. Then another thought occurred to him, and as he drifted below, closer now, he reached out, the hand without the aspirator nudging and opening through the bars._

_The man’s voice, when he spoke, was quiet, spoken impossibly through closed lips, but clear, as though spoken directly into his (mind) ear. He looked at Richie, who held his breath still though he didn’t have to._

_“It’s too tight, I can’t get out.”_

_“Then c'mon, get smaller!” Richie shouted, his mouth likewise closed while he threw the words. Upon hearing it, the caged man became a child, the skin at his belly closing in over the manhole-wound as it stretched around his shrinking frame._

_“It’s too dark, I can’t see a thing.”_

_“Then here, take my glasses!” Richie found them as he spoke, or rather after he said it, as though his words willed them into being. They’d been lodged shallowly in the sand by the bars, and they slipped through them easily, onto the small button nose. The too-big frames dripped down the boy’s face as the blood on the lenses dribbled up._

_“It’s too deep, I can’t catch my breath.”_

_“Then look, share my lungs!” He nudged the boy’s chin lightly with his aspirator, who was now speaking thinly through hands clasped over a tight-shut mouth, as though, while speaking, he had realized his own breathlessness. Weak hands held it to tight lips but didn't press, wielding it like a snorkel. He looked to Richie, then, with an uncanny expression, his cavernous-dark eyes evincing a guilt as though for ills yet uncommitted._

_“It’s too scary, I can’t do this alone.”_

_Richie was silent, then, for a moment, looking at this tiny, fearsome creature, and didn’t say anything. Instead he reached out further, grasping a small hand in his, tugging its owner toward the strange barrier. As he did so, the arm he held began to turn translucent, the vague aching glow at his back no longer silhouetting him, but reaching closer until it was filling him with light, transmuting him into an x-ray image. Outside his body the light was white, amorphous, but as it filled him, his skin bloomed orange, then red. He bled through the bars._

_On the other side, from where Richie had tugged him back, he began to stretch and grow tall again as skin congealed atop the burning inner glow. The larger wound remained healed, marked only by a marbled target centered on his gut, resembling where a tree branch might have been pruned and then healed over years. A stark dash of a scar stayed slashed vertically down one cheek._

_“I don’t want to do it alone either.” Richie murmured. It was soft, almost inaudible. At their close distance, however, his companion heard just fine, and pulled him into a tight embrace._

_They stayed like that for a time (seconds? millenia? what is time in a turtle’s world?) before there came a murmur in response, nuzzled against Richie’s neck. “Mind if I borrow that?” He didn’t say what, but Richie knew, and kissed the medicine to Eddie’s lips._

_He pulled the trigger._

• • •

When Richie woke up, on top of the faded Town House hotel comforter, birds chirped outside, fading rain dappled the rooftop, and he was alone. Eddie was still dead, somewhere far beneath the chipper singing birds and the New England -styled roof and the grubby, worthless earth.

Eddie didn’t, in the end, blast off when he took his dream-medicine, didn’t shoot up and out of It’s cavern like a regular rocket launcher once he got a hit of HydrOx. He didn’t burst out of the Neibolt rubble, through the walls of the well and through the rotten wooden wreckage where they’d left him to fester. Richie thought of some roadkill he’d seen on his way to the arcade, crushed-flat skin and gushed-out viscera, and wondered, now, if that was more how Eddie looked. (stop. please.)

They’d all, the rest of them, been granted the mercy to live, to leave, to take a big performative jump of cleansing themselves of the whole matter. When Richie thought about that time, he remembered the Losers, there, laughing. Splashing each other in the quarry slosh. Easy living. Ben and Beverly tucked somewhere beneath the water’s translucent veneer, locking lips like hormone-heady teens at the sloppy end of prom night. Bill seeming to glare at Ben like a bull at a matador as Bev’s red hair flipped about between them in some banal hetero mating challenge. Mike, positively disassociating, planning his escape.

To Richie, they all looked psychotic.

Eddie had just died. Just before. Earlier that day. What had it been, an hour? In recent memory. And he’d bled out, out of sight. If Eddie had any last words - after a weak attempt at comforting Richie (comforting him!), hoping to make his friend laugh through his palpably growing distress - they went unheard. He’d been their honest-to-goodness saving grace, understood what it was that would destroy It for true this time, had done as much himself, had fully faced his own lifelong demons, _mano a mano enferma_. He’d made their purifying cleanse possible. Now he seemed like barely a footnote in their minds.

Maybe Richie was just redirecting his grief, had landed on the anger stage and got emotionally clogged up there, decided to direct it at the first thing he saw like some spiteful newborn duck. What was he doing? These were Richie’s lifelong friends, after all... Lifelong, minus twenty-seven years, that is. He’d managed that long without them, hadn’t he? Then again, that meant just as long without Eddie, too, but Richie would argue that he’d always felt an amorphously Eddie-shaped deficiency in his life, even for want of name for him. But when the Losers had all circled around to hold him, Richie did, after all, feel something like comfort.

…Until he thought: why did this seem so one-sided? How was it that they all seemed just fine and dandy? Why was he the only Loser in need of consolation here? After the loss of one of their own? And, simple as that, a quiet fury lit back up in the back of his mind.

So for a while, Richie simply lay there in this bitter reminiscence. Most of these friends had already moved on with their lives, quite literally, driving or flying on to their respective obligations, making dubious claims to meet up again, sometime, surely. Bill was back to his unjustifiably successful career and his so-called marriage, Ben and Beverly were on their way to bunny-fuck all over his boat, and Mike was packing his car to fuck off to anywhere and everywhere that wasn’t the northern deep-south of the east-coast.

An hour passed this way, or hell, maybe it was hours plural. Richie nearly began counting, the ticking of the clock growing louder in the deafening silence, as though actively antagonizing his vain pursuit of nullity. Richie nearly even got up, if just to tear the thing off the wall, but, for the moment, rage has made way for a cryogenic weight. Surely his guts had been extracted one by one and been replaced with a fresh finish of cement. Before he could muster a suitable burst of mania, however, of its own volition the clock (stopped) ran out of battery. Bafflement and silence-madness almost rallied him, Richie shooting the device a pointedly curious glance, before there came a knock at the door.

Considering all the soldiers, him besides, had already moved out, this seemed… strange. Stranger still as it was three o’clock in the morning. Richie’s sleep schedule had been sufficiently fucked since all of this went down, however, and was more than well-rested and frankly at this point was just languishing. He pushed himself up with great effort, knees cracking and neck stiff as he rubbed at it.

It’s only at mid-pull on the door that logic kicked in. With a sudden knotting of guts it occurred to him that, shit, it was the cops. They knew what he did to Bowers, got his fingerprints off of the axe or whatever, decided it wasn’t self-defense, and they were here, now, to arrest him. Or maybe one of them was just, like, Henry's buddy, because, yeah, and was coming to avenge his fellow psycho. Unlike this rush of potential reasonings, however, self-preservation had of yet failed to kick in, as Richie was all-in-all too fucking miserable to bother halting the continuous arcing motion of his arm. It clicked, and creaked, and swung open towards him.

And outside the door, there was a face amidst the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so I've been reading a lot of comforting fix-it fic since watching Ch.2, &a lot of it has been about healing + growth + self-acceptance, about the Losers coming together to support each other + move forward with their lives together, &I've loved it, but then I also thought : what if no one was coping?
> 
> ** fair warning : this is my first fic, so it might be... rough? it's been like three actual years since I last wrote prose. so, with that in mind, feel free to dunk on me / critique?


	2. Epistrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
> 
> And I dropped down, and down –
> 
> And hit a World, at every plunge,
> 
> And Finished knowing – then – ”
> 
> \- Emily Dickinson

“You… forgot your keys?”

“I didn’t--! Fucking, ‘forget’ my keys-?! They’re in a fucking ancient alien cavern, Richie, I am NOT planning on going back for them anytime soon!”

Eddie was no longer standing in the dingy dank hallway outside of Richie’s Derry hotel room, but was now pacing the hallway just inside, erratically cutting his words with gesticulations like a knife to countertop vegetables. Richie was so swept up by endearment for the familiar gesture that for an absurd moment he forgot the nature of this meeting.

When he had first stepped inside, Richie took a beat to express the full range of his emotional vocabulary, while Eddie, in response, had stepped briskly forward, baffled and abashed, to hold him. And Richie held him back, glasses greasing up against Eddie’s musky matted-down hair. They folded around each other, stopped there at the entrance, rooted in place like an ancient, tangled pair of trees. If Richie had still been counting to the ticking of the clock (had it not stopped), he would have been mortified by the sprawl of time that they passed like this. Nonetheless, uncounted, it felt far shorter than he might have liked, and eventually, they stepped apart. With distance came clarity.

“Hey, Eds?”

“Don’t call me that yes what.”

“Didn’t you fucking die?”

“That--”

“Like, how are you here?”

To be honest, despite the compulsive ask, Richie didn’t want to know. Maybe it was some rejuvenating Turtle-Magic™, or a savvy and convoluted Eddie K. escape plan, or maybe it was, actually, “just a flesh wound.” He could give a shit about the precise method of Eddie’s return so long as he was here. And so, the non-answer he got was far from disappointing.

“I… don’t know.”

“Ah…“ Richie nodded sagely as though this explained quite a lot, actually, thank you for the clarification... before flailing his arms wildly as though waving away smoke, continuing. 

“...No okay but c’mon so like, chock it up to the power of friendship or whatever, just-- what do you remember? Y’know-- like, I dunno, where did you turn up?” Richie stuck his hands deep into the pockets of a plain white hoodie, an oddly bland fashion choice compared to his baseline of aesthetic chaos, but frankly he’d felt utterly blank since leaving the sewers… No, that wasn’t true. He’d been a mess. He’d just wanted to feel blank. Not that he could.

“Okay so I was… still at Neibolt.” Eddie piped up, a tight look of concentrated remembrance etching lines about his face. “Above ground. But… Lying there, under the remains of the house.” He alternated his weight from foot-to-foot, rocking himself with this nervously self-soothing back-and-forth bounce. “And so I was shoving off all this debris, and--- honestly, dude? It was so gross man, like, there were these old rusty nails and-- y’know can you just fucking imagine like I survive the giant alien-clown-spider pincer-leg but get taken down by fucking tetanus or or or you know asbestos inhalation because just there were these these plumes and like yeah sure like obviously I don’t know who actually built that decrepit monstrosity and sure it could be up to code why not but uh somehow heh well I’d wager it wasn’t quite up to it I mean if you--”

“Eds.” Richie buffered.

“Uh, right, yeah, so-- there was all this debris, and these old wonky-looking sunflowers… Oh and, I had my inhaler with me? Somehow, again? But, I don’t-- I’m sorry dude, I really don’t remember how I actually got-- OUT.” Eddie stared at the floorboards, as though the memory would settle could he just peel them back. “But I do feel like I remember… And this is gonna sound crazy, I know, I’m preempting that by saying, yeah I KNOW, but I’m pretty sure I remember-- being carried? Back…?”

“By… Who?” Richie imagined a figure, clad in full peppermint-stick chromatics.

“Um, I thought it was… and, again, I was taking in all these, as I said, plumes of, like whatever old shit that house--”

“Eheh-ddieee--!” He whined.

“You, I thought it was you.”

“Oh…” Richie breathed, feeling both flattered and guilty. “...But it wasn’t me.”

“No, yeah, no I figured that, Rich. You were, like, extremely surprised to see me here just now. And, imagining you did, somehow, manage such a feat, I figure you would at least have stuck around long enough to gloat about your bulging arms or your massive dick or whatever.”

“I mean I can still gloat about both of those things if you’d like--”

“Shut up dickwad adults are talking here.”

“Oh, right. Where?”

“Just because I un-murdered myself does not mean I won’t stoop to murder now.”

“Red really is your color, Eds, so--”

“ANYWAY it probably was some kinda fever-dream state if I’m being honest,” Eddie shoved forward without him. “Because, last thing I remember before… Yeah… Was you hovering over me, just making this… geez, I don’t think I’d ever seen you make that expression before? Maybe that one time, when I fell, and you tried to set me, that was almost… But god no this was worse you looked so fucking miserable, it was like, who died? But, well, me, I guess. I died. Or was dying, so--”

Richie clapped his hands together in mock-prayer. “Hey-ho, ol’ chap! Let’s not linger on all that, my good man!” He cleared his throat, dropping the mock-British. “You’re good you’re here that’s all that matters. C’mon, we should do something!”

Eddie furrowed his brows in Richie’s general direction, re-calibrating to Richie’s (avoidant) pace. “Uh, sure. I mean, yeah. Sure. No time like the present, which is… almost 4 am,” he deadpanned.

“Oh shit, right, yeah, sorry man.” Richie made a face as though he had just immobilely tripped. “Yeah you probably need to, um, rest anyway. I’ll be on the couch, so, just, go on, sorry.” He held his arms out zombie-rigid in front of himself, grabbing at Eddie’s forearms to guided him towards the room, trying not to contemplate his sleeping where Richie had slept.

“What? Dude, no,” Eddie scoffed, perhaps the same thought occuring to him and he found himself repulsed by the thought of that Trashmouth-stench. Richie felt vaguely embarrassed by his own suggestion. “Don’t worry. You look like shit. We can share.”

Time stopped. The words that just entered Richie’s ears scrambled about his brain and he had to rearrange them again like refrigerator magnet poetry, until, once arranged, he briefly shot out of his torso and astral-projected somewhere outside of the stratosphere, tussled with a couple rowdy cumulonimbus clouds, pinballed between a few constellations, before plummeting unceremoniously back into his stock-still body and its quick-beat heart.

“Hmmuhhwhawuzzat?” Richie garbled.

“Ohmygod dude. Are you going to be weird about this? Really? Are you going to be no-homo about this? We’re adults, man, come on, we can sleep in the same fucking vicinity of one other.”

“No yeah no yeah you yeah you’re right yeah sure I love vicinities.”

“Dude.”

“Look, buddy, I’m just worried you can’t handle the full, raw power of the Richie Tozier pheremo-aroma bonanza! Four out of five doctors have called it ‘troubling,’ ‘skunk-adjacent,’ and ‘really, just bad B.O.--’ ”

Eddie slipped past him mid-ramble and fell weightily to the unmade mattress, slithered further in, and flung a corner of the bedsheet lazily over half of his torso.

“...You coming?” He said, dull and muffled into the pillow.

“Yeah, man!” Richie half-squeaked half-sighed with full-false confidence, bouncing from foot to foot like an Olympic athlete loosening up for a particularly high pole-vault.

“...Yeah?” Eddie said, doubtful, when a full minute passed while Richie remained stuck in his video game character’s idle pose.

“Yeah, dude!” He said, unmoved.

“......Okay I am not fucking moving right now but I will kill you tomorrow morning - or, today morning - if you’re not under this disgusting hotel comforter by the time I wake up.”

“Alright, dude, geez, yeah, I’m coming.” Richie felt both charmed and tense as shit, but tried weakly to express neither of these things as he shuffled over to the bed and leaned himself lightly upon the very furthest edge.

“...Are you fucking serious, dude?” He side-eyed him where he lay. “You’re ab-so-lutely going to fall off.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I like waking up on the ground in the middle of the night, ever think of that?” Richie faux-argued.

“Oh, sure, yeah man, who doesn’t like waking up with a bad back on a hard surface?”

“Heh… that’s what she said.”

“Whuh-- that doesn’t even--! ...Wait does it?” He yelped out. “--No, shut up, that doesn’t even make sense! Beep-beep, go to sleep, idiot!”

“Yeah, yeah, alright Mrs. K--” Richie put a hand to his mouth. “Oh~! Oops, Freudian slip, I guess~! Being next to you here, I suppose… Tee hee~!”

“Oh my god oh my god oh my--! GOD you are so--!” Eddie heaved himself up, the sheet slipping down off of him, and grabbed Richie by the forearms, hefting him down to the off-center of the bed until he was pinned beneath him. Eddie puffed out an exhausted breath, the heat of it skirting Richie’s cheek, which was itself heating up under the man’s exhausted and furious scrutiny. Richie gaped up at him, trying to squeeze out some semblance of words, but was at a loss. Eddie’s brows pinched, noting his widening eyes. For a moment it looked like gears were working behind that gaze, buffering, buffering… Cancel job. His expression remained skeptically neutral as he fell back onto the mattress in a lump.

“Isn’t that better?” Eddie mouthed back down into the pillow.

“It sure is something!” Richie choked, face utterly flushed.

“Goodnight, Richie.”

“...’Night, Eds.”

• • •

Richie lay there, sleeplessly, staring at the ceiling, listening for the clock, finding its tick. And when Eddie woke just four hours later, he seemed rested enough. They were faced away from each other, still, with Eddie curled in on himself and Richie stock-still on his side beside him, but even that felt like too much. He had considered pulling away, back towards the edge, or even fully off of it, onto the sofa, as he’d intended. But, in spite of himself, he stayed, swayed by the intoxicating sound of even breathing flooding the chest next to him. Eventually, Richie’s rabbit-quick heart slowed slightly, steadied by the softness of that sound, the rhythm, and the heat that ebbed off of its owner. When Eddie finally began to stir beside him, Richie quickly scrunched his eyes closed in a hopefully believable-enough way, and then stretched out cartoonishly with a drawn-out yawn. Eddie rolled out of bed beside him, hopping up as his feet touched to the floor, uttering a simple declaration.

“Bagels!”

“Eddie, my love, that’s not a sentence.”

“Oh, sorry, exc-uuuse me, I’ll complete my extremely ambiguous sentence fragment, Rich. Can I get bagels? Can they get bagels? Can he, she, we get bagels? Dumbass?”

“You’re such a little shit.” Richie said, grinning wide. He scratched at his hair, then rolled directly off the bed, onto the floor, with a loud THUMP.

“Oh shit-- Richie? You okay--?” Eddie rushed over to peak at where he had face-planted onto the grimy hotel carpet.

Richie continued to lay there for a moment, unmoving, before peeking out to the side at Eddie’s troubled expression. “Donde estan los bagels?”

The sympathy visibly melted off of his face. “Get up you asshole, we’re getting them and you’ve just officially forfeited your right to a vote in the matter.” Eddie got up and turned away from him, moving to fix the bed. Richie considered a quip about breakfast dictatorships before letting it slip away in favor of a more pressing matter.

“But duudeee I’m grossss! I haven’t showered in, like, three days!”

“That sounds like a you proble-- actually, wait, seriously? That’s disgusting. I can smell that. That is now a me problem. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

(oh, I dunno, it’s been pretty chill around here, no major life or death events to speak of,) ”Eh, you know me, just ol’ lazybones Trashmouth, ignoring basic hygiene. Was thinking of rebranding, anyway-- what d’you think of,” Richie splayed his hands out in front of his chest, as though a chyron was being accordioned between his palms. “ ‘TRASHSTENCH!’ ”

Eddie sighed as he crocodile-grinned. “Alright. I’ve heard enough. I’m going without you.”

Richie leapt forward, grabbing at his wrist. “NO--! No, don’t--!” (shit.) “Ah, well, I just-- you’re probably gonna… spit in food if I don’t-- yeah. Supervision.”

“...Alright, I’ll wait for you to de-stench. Then, food. Hurry up.”

“Why, call me Judy De-stench, ‘cuz this dame is on it!” 

Eddie dragged hands down his face. “Please, please tell me how you are paid for this so-called humor! Christ...”

• • •

Once Richie was good and hosed down, the two headed out together to feed themselves on some mediocre Mainer bagels, the subject of which Eddie had apparently prepared a full monologue of complaints over. (“i mean you come from new york, new-fucking-york, and then come back to the backwash of the coast that is maine and suddenly, suddenly! it’s like, hey! they really have just been feeding these people breaded tires up here, huh! maybe that’s why everyone’s so aggressive in this place. i mean, okay, look, let’s start with the texture…”) They ate their food outside, objectively unremarkable as the breadrings were, relishing instead the crisp air of impending autumn, bagging a couple extras for later despite their complaints.

As they got back into Richie’s garish overcompensate-o-mobile, Eddie clenched at the crumpled brown doggie bag in his hands and looked to Richie.

“...Hey, Rich, d’you think we stop off at the bridge?”

“Uh, why, dude?” Richie said blandly, adjusting his mirrors, his glasses, looking excessively around the half-empty parking lot, triple-checking his blindspot, looking in every direction save for his co-pilot’s face, before backing out and attempting to subdue what felt like an oncoming stroke. Eddie didn’t say which bridge, but there was only one of note in their mutual hometown.

“I mean the Kissing Bridge.”

“NO, YEAH, I KNOW,” Richie said, less blandly, before clearing his throat. “Just-- why there, man? It’s pretty corny.”

“I mean, I think it’s kind of sweet? But that’s not the point. It’s just… I dunno, the view’s pretty nice up there? I actually used to go there, sometimes, just to sit on the fence, look out at the water. And once I leave Derry, I…” Eddie paused, looking down at his hands, released the bag from his bunched fists, turned his palms up, and looked at their smooth, unmarred surfaces. “Don’t know about you, Rich, but I’m not planning on coming back here for-- well, for a long time.”

“One last look?” Richie offered.

“One last look.” Eddie accepted.

It was such a simple request that Richie swallowed his pride, or his shame, or whichever old, aching feeling was convulsing inside his gut at the mere mention of the place. He pulled them out of the lot, down the road, toward a memory.

As they pulled to the roadside by the Kissing Bridge, Richie’s nervous hands had sufficiently lubricated the driver’s wheel, so he took one sesame seed -speckled napkin to wipe where his hands had restlessly rested. Eddie looked on pityingly, and slightly disgusted, but blessedly uncomprehending.

Richie took a half-full bagelshop coffee cup takeaway up from the cupholder between them. It had been Eddie's coffee, but after Richie had guzzled his own to wash down breakfast’s full carb assault, Eddie volunteered his own remains, saying he’d already had more than enough of his daily caffeine intake. It had gone cold by now, but was a welcome comfort to Richie’s ever-antsy and now-empty hands nonetheless.

Looking at it now, the bridge was something of an strange sight-- immediately the eye was drawn to the red over-arch, which looked like a barn had been, first off, gutted, and then, tossed into the vicinity of a blackhole, stretched out obscenely, all before being impossibly tugged back down to earth. Beside it, the squat, cut-up fence-posts seemed almost quaint. Or they’d ought to. Richie clasped at the drink between his hands, taking a little swig of the ol’ bean before glancing quickly to his companion.

Eddie was looking beyond all of this and into the trees with quiet-wild eyes, concentrating on the tree-crown sway, the hush-hush of their bristling, matched by the woosh-woosh of water below. And then his companion closed his eyes to it all, listening, as though in losing one sense he might gain in another. Richie didn’t join him in this, didn’t listen to the natural wonders, didn’t look at them either, eyes fixed. Everything outside the perimeter of that body was negotiable, anyway.

But Eddie turned to him, then, just as Richie was looking on with his continuous, covert, over-indulgent fondness, and suddenly the surrounding sights around were, y’know, very interesting, actually.

“Did you ever carve anything here?” Eddie asked.

“...Hh--Uhh, what?” (did he know? holy shit did he know? fuck, could he--)

“You know, man, like a crush or someth--”

“YEAH! I know that’s what people carved up here, man! We grew up in the same shitty town, there was like a grand total of four activities around here, so, um, yeah, I know, jesus.” (okay okay it didn’t sound like eddie actually knew but just now richie sounded stupidly defensive so good job bucko maybe now he really did--)

“Oho you totally did didn’t you.” Eddie teased. (shit.) “C’mon, spill.”

“Is this why you really wanted to drag me up here, man? To spill my guts to you?” It came out harsher than Richie intended.

“What? No, dude, chill. I really just wanted to see the sights, I didn’t think I’d be stepping on any landmines asking about some old crush.” So, apparently, Eddie was blindsided. He was safe. “Yeesh, did it end that badly?” 

Richie’s foot traced a divot in the cement, spidery cracks splintering out from its center, his eyes rooted at their meeting. “It never… actually… began.”

“Oh.” Eddie sounded surprised by the suddenly soft tone. “You’ve always been so, you know, loud, I just thought… I dunno, never saw you being the cards-close-to-the-chest type.”

The sheer expanse of this mismatch between his seeming and substance, attentively cultivated, yet grotesquely disingenuous, just then sparked a strange sort of madness in Richie’s gnawing core. It flooded his veins, and with the auto-pilot speed of trigger-impulse agitation, he took one sloppy gulp of coffee, smacked the emptied cup on the hood of the car, stomped over to the fence, crouched, slapped at the site of his ancient handiwork, arched back up, shrugged his shoulders, and spread his arms in a broad come-at-me-bro pose, then stopped, rigid, arms crossed, looking pointedly away.

In his periphery, he noted Eddie looking at him like a particularly rowdy zoo animal, chin pulling back into his neck and brows low. After a moment, though, he began to amble over with an amused if bewildered grin, waiting for the punchline. With his arms crossed over his chest, Richie felt his sweat more acutely, bunching up at his each and every crevice.

Eddie approached and crouched and fell out of view, but Richie refused to angle for a better look, to face him full-on. He didn’t want to see the reaction to an action he already deeply regretted. What if Eddie, who had just defied all the odds, was lost to him now, simply by ways of a whim, and not even for some life-threatening, earth-shuttering reason, but just because it was, like, too fucking awkward to be in a room together. And then the Losers would schedule all these meet-ups and, sure, they’d invite Richie, but in a way where it was not like, y’know, they wanted him to come, but kind of obligatory, since it’d be too obvious to single him out, and Eddie would tell them separately that it was, just, weird now, so could they not--

“Who’s ‘E’?”

“You, dumbass.” SHIT NO THAT WAS HIS OUT HE COULD HAVE SAID ANY--

“Oh…” (shit.) “OH.” (SHIT.) “Wait, really? ...No, but-- Rich, are you being serious right now? …But, I mean, you--? I thought--?” Richie couldn’t look at him. “…Okay, is this some kind of prank, man?” Eddie smiled thinly, wanting to be in on the joke.

If he was gonna dig his own grave, what was the use of leaving it shallow? He sighed, “...No, actually, it’s pretty simple, dude: I’m gay and you were my first love,” the full six feet, why not. “--Not a big deal!”

When Eddie remained quiet for a disquietingly long time, Richie was forced to turn. He saw his friend, crouched there, looking right back at him, brows low and pinched near-unibrow tight, examining Richie’s expression, waiting, still, for the trap door to fall out beneath him. Instead, Richie stood there, holding his gaze, at first apprehensively, and then, challenging, in spite of himself.

After a few infinite seconds passed like this, Eddie’s brows leapt jackrabbit quick up his forehead and he broke the staring contest, looking instead to where his hand rested on the carved initials. He traced the little additive crucifix between the R and the E, contemplative… Focused… Weighing… 

“Aaalrighty then, enough of THAT. Yikes, kids amirite? Sooo awkward,” Richie started ambling towards the car before Eddie could arrive at whatever piteous assessment his mind was ultimately hurtling towards. “Soooo, where’s next on Mr. Kaspbrak’s Last-Chance Nostalgia Tour?” He mercifully reached the door handle, wrenching it open.

Eddie was still crouched fenceside by the time Richie had gotten back into the driver’s seat, buckled in, aimlessly fussed with the mirrors, and readjusted his seat only to reset these same adjustments. At least a solid minute passed before, through the frame of the car window, he registered Eddie standing up, brushing off dusty knees, and approaching, slowly and without expression, until he filled the frame and slipped inside. He said nothing, and didn’t seem to be angling to, so Richie broke the silence.

“...So who’s being no-homo, now?”

“OHMYGOD I’M NOT BEING--! FUCKING--?! ‘NO-HOMO,’ MAN, I’M-- JUST… PROCESSING!”

Richie giggled, satisfied with himself for diffusing the smog of indeterminate tension choking the airspace, and took the opportunity to quickly shift gears. “So, seriously, where to next? Arcade? Quarry? Baseball field? Day’s young, and we’ve got time, Eduardo.”

Mouth agape, Eddie gawked at him, ruffled, his ramble’s trajectory being stifled midstream. His eyes and mouth shut, resetting, exasperation only exaggerated by the audibly click-close of his teeth. Eddie stole one deeply world-weary breath in, then out, through flaring nostrils. When his eyes leapt open again, it was with a half-alien expression, consciously neutral, before smoothing out, face turning thoughtful, eyes flicking down and to the right, then bounding back up.

“How about the old train tracks?” There was a light little quirk up at the edges of his mouth, almost untraceable were it not for those giveaway dimples.

Several lazily silly comebacks came to mind, but Richie still felt too amped-up from nerves to trust his critical thinking about whether any of them are actually funny, so instead he said, “Aye aye, Cap’n!” and did a goofy little salute before backing out of his awkward tilted parking job at the side of the road. He blasted on the radio to stave off any potentials toward awkward silence, or worse, incriminating conversation, and when some Bowie started playing, Richie’s hack-job accompaniment induced enough groans (and eventual co-vocals) from his companion that the ensuing cacophony renders both silence and speech into seeming myths.

So by the time they arrived, Richie had adequately obliviated his earlier admission from recent memory, practically skipping out of the car door from where he’d parked it diagonal and directly atop the tracks. Eddie slipped out second, and comparatively more gracefully, betrayed only by cracking knees as he scrunched back up to his full (half-pint) height. For a moment he hovered around Richie’s car like a kid around the edges of a pool before kicking out-- in his case, stepping tentatively forward, and then, with a few wider strides, directly down the rail line.

“You know, when we were younger, I always used to hang out here.”

Richie looked at him sidelong, curious. He knew. He also knew that Eddie almost never invited the Losers to join him there, but-- “Yeah, I remember.”

Eddie didn’t look back at him, but nodded in acknowledgement before continuing. “God I couldn’t wait to get out. It’s like I was…” He huffed a light laugh, but it was humorless, “--suffocating.”

Richie felt a not-unfamiliar impulse to reach for him then -- the same kind of pull that would once find outlet in countless noogies and arm wrestles and full-body stumbling tussles, but became harder to act upon once Richie understood the greedy impulse behind it. He ignored it. Then and now. Eddie continued.

“And I mean, obviously I know I wasn’t the only Loser that wanted to leave this dump, or, god, even the only Mainer, but--” Eddie walked along the track line with a careful step, head down, one foot swung around and placed directly before the other, like a trapeze artist upon an invisible line. “My mom always had just the right bludgeon to knock me down small. To make me fearful. But then, safe too.” He sighed, kicking a pebble along his path. “And I know, I KNOW all of us were afraid, but… how do I explain it? There’s a specific kind of fear--” he wobbled on one leg, tilted, then righted himself. “A kind of fear where it’s just like-- you can’t live with it, but at the same time, you’d die without it. Something animal, something like survival. But, that way, you sort of forget to just be-- human. You know? …I don’t know.”

Richie was staring at the back of Eddie’s head throughout the span of his speech, wondering what kind of expression he was making… Additionally, whether Eddie had a family history of male-pattern baldness to anticipate down the line. Richie had only seen one photo of Eddie’s father, years ago-- the only one Sonia Kaspbrak had failed to squirrel away in an attempt to imagine no man existed for her to grieve-- but it had been a front-facing photo, so he couldn’t really be sure. And as though in answer to his thought (the first of them, at least), Eddie craned back and looked at him fiercely, eyes bright.

“For so long I was just stuck here. Even after I left, there was still a part of myself buried here. Like I’d brought the medicine with me but not the sickness--” he paused, then shook his head about like a wet dog. “Or I mean, like I’d brought the sickness with me and not the medicine, geez. You get it. My point is-- now?” Eddie did a 180˚, spinning on one leg to fully face Richie, beaming. “Now, we can go anywhere.”

The impulse struck him again, and Richie imagined himself, striding towards Eddie, down that steady metal line, legs wheeling him along evenly, and grasping him in a suplex-hold, only to lift and twirl him around like a newfound fiance. Swallowing this impulse now, too, he allowed himself one overly-earnest smile to a one-word question.

“We?”

Eddie shrugged shyly. It wasn’t any answer, not to the question spurring on the very beat of Richie’s heart, but it did answer the one behind his current twitchy anxiety: maybe Eddie didn’t want him, but he wanted him by his side. And, at the end of it all, that was all he needed.

They continued on, driving around to a few more hotbeds of hometown nostalgia before heading back to the town house, needlessly exhausted for the amount of actual activity they were engaged in. Along the way they stopped by the Tracker Brothers’ Truck Depot, which appeared to have been, in their absence, dismantled for parts and then cobbled back together again. Richie found a rugged old baseball that had been sent away and mimed out the start of a game on their makeshift baseball field while Eddie played referee to all his competing roles. 

From there they wandered along together down Up-Mile Hill, peeking into storefronts: their old beloved movie theater closed up for renovations, a solemn little antique shop with wonky-faced store-owner, a Baptist church with a towering needle of a steeple and an age-old running clock.

Last, they stopped off at Center Street Drug to grab a few snacks to nosh on in place of the half-decent dinner neither of them knew how to cook. Mr. Keene, still remarkably alive but looking well past his sell-by date, eyed them inexplicably as they wound their way through the aisles. Eddie had told Richie once that this decrepit man was the one who’d laid bare all of his mother’s manipulations. He’d wanted to hug the man for finally freeing Eddie of the delusion of his weakness. But then, Eddie had frowned, continuing with the fact that Mr.Keene had seemed to take a sort of sick gratification in this diagnosis of good-health, and not for the dissemination of truth, but somehow, for having disillusioned Eddie, for having sullied a small boy’s faith in his simple, unconditional love. (‘It was like he popped a rancid wart or zit or something, but not to like, make it go away, but just because he liked all that pain and pus.’) Richie scowled at the man now, their transaction complete, and stormed off as well as a man can with noisy little snack bags in tow.

Somewhere along the line, the way to the Barrens had passed them by without comment, neither suggesting heading over, or elsewise actively committing to avoidance, but the latter sentiment hovered there regardless, mutual and unspoken.

• • •

Once they got back to the Town House, Richie made a b-line for the lobby bathroom, then swung back around to where he’d left Eddie moseying about by the front desk, frowning at the needlessly convoluted ceiling tiling, lacking his own key. His heavy brows perked up inquisitively as Richie made a rush for the front desk that seemed so rarely attended. Seizing the opportunity, he asked for a spare key to Eddie’s room. Wasting no patience, Eddie snatched it from the young desk attendant’s listless hand and practically leapt up the stairs two at a time.  
  


It was only after Eddie made his exuberant escape that Richie found it in himself to feel remorse for his own rationale. Surely Eddie, like the rest of them, with his bags in tow, would now find fit to rush back off back to Manhattan, back to his lovely life and… existing wife. Things were falling back into familiar states but Richie couldn’t just slip back into those old clothes just yet-- quite literally, as his favorite jacket was now an underground bloodrag.

But he moped back up those stairs to his own empty-again room regardless, dumping his melty-sad self onto the sofa like moist mashed potatoes onto a dusty school lunch tray. After a few immobile minutes here, there was a light knock at the door. Soon enough Eddie apparently realized it had been dejectedly left open, inviting any fate, and he elbowed his way in, luggage in tow.

Before Richie could even ask it, Eddie answered his question: “Seeing as I got stabbed in the fucking face alone in that room, I would rather not be there. Or alone. Shut up.”

“...Literally didn’t say anything, man.”

“That’s a preemptive shut-up. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Richie weighed a few wise-ass remarks in regards to the size of Eddie’s luggage or the concept of preemptive maneuvers, but he was tired, and, despite himself, satisfied. “...I’m glad you’re here,” which came out more earnest than intended, but if Eddie knew all of Richie’s business and still considered him a safe haven, that was probably fine. There were no more surprises here.

Eddie glanced at his own luggage, blankly at first, then glared, likely contemplating the sequence of rituals he would have to go through with its contents before being prepped to sleep. He tore his eyes away after a few seconds of this, turning instead towards the sofa - where Richie had been watching him with the light amusement that always came with reading into Eddie’s face-journeys-- which apparently had eventually landed him a decision. Specifically, landing on the opposite side of the sofa, tangling his legs with Richie’s, just like their agonisingly pubescent hammock days.

And now, like then, Richie put the full extent of his willpower into suppressing an impending boner. In the interim before arriving here, Eddie had somehow seen it fit to change, if not his black hoodie, his crisp (but admittedly sewer-sodden) pants, exchanging them for short red shorts, remorselessly reminiscent of the ones that had taunted Richie’s schoolday daydreams.

“Anything you wanna do, Rich?” 

“A-anything I--?”

A thousand suggestive comments come banshee-screaming into his mind, and a younger Richie might’ve said them, but they would land a bit differently now in light of… certain revelations. In fact they’d probably sound downright sincere now (and maybe they were), though admittedly they were only thinly-veiled truth-to-joke sublimations even then. Because, after all, what Richie really wanted to do was,

“Read.” He did not want to do this why did he say thi--

“Huh. Alright. Got anything good with you?”

“Yeah, hold on,” he had, in fact, swept several books and comic books from his to-read pile into his bag before heading out toward Derry, grossly overestimating the flight-time and imagining he would spend said time reading and not panic-napping.

Richie leaned over to where his bag lay in a lump just at the cusp of arm’s-reach, swiped at it with the tips of his fingers until he could drag it over and pull a completely nonsensical array of options out.: There was a book on speculative exo-planet environmental conditions, two books from the New York Times bestseller list (not at the top though-- richie always went for the underdog standouts), a slim book of intermittently indecipherable poetry, an old horror clunker, two French fantasy comics, a book on U.S. / middle-east relations, a philosopher's collection of existential essays, and a book his mom had recommended at some point in his life, the name of which had been recalled to him all-at-once unprompted.

Eddie looked somewhere between disgusted and impressed at the array, the spindle between the two wavering on the question of whether Richie would ever, actually, read these. Eddie nodded to the book of essays, the writer of which was likely on his to-read list as well, and Richie tossed it over. As for himself, he picked up the horror novel, which he had admittedly already read, but had wanted to revisit for his favorite section. (richie had recently read an article or a twitter thread or something about people with anxiety being prone to re-engaging with the same stories as a way to abate the unexpected. like, huh? now why would richie ever have cause to dread sudden, unexpected life events?)

Despite the attempt at self-soothing, Richie found himself re-reading the same three sentences over and over again without absorbing one iota of information. Instead, he found himself completely preoccupied by the soft, subtle brush of Eddie’s legs against his own, locking them together between their bodies. Pitiful creature that he was, this was enough to ensure Richie a happy little half-chub, mercifully guarded from view by some awkwardly bent knees.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one with rapidly dissolving literacy rates because, just as soon as Richie had found a near-comfortable position that also concealed his developing capital-p Predicament, Eddie lovingly kicked him in the fucking face.

“...Edward.”

“Ugh, dude, that’s disgusting. I’m not like, a teenage vampire.”

“Technically, said ‘teenage’ vampire wasn’t a teenager either, but that’s besides the point. So, I’ll say it again: Edward.”

“Alright, yes, still gross but technically my name: what?”

“D’you know what’s really gross, Monsieur Kaspbrak? Ze, how you say-- disgusting foot pressed directly into my damn cheek--! Eddie--! What the fuck, man-?! Just because I love you doesn’t mean I’ve got like, a foot-fetish for you. Geez, assumptions much?” Richie grabbed at the offending ankle and angled it away from him. When he felt a full-body twitch from his companion from where their bodies met, he glanced his way. Eddie’s eyes were big and buggy, his face vulnerable.

“...Still?” Eddie begged, soft.

“What...?” Richie begged, lost.

Rather than verbally elaborating, Eddie arched up, looming above, pinning Richie’s face between his arms, staring him down, baffled, flushed, curious, uncertain. Richie’s expression was a mirror, moon to his blinding sunglow. His carefully-constructed go-to devil-may-care mask shattered about him utterly. Then Eddie lowered down, his face floating close, the question whispering still between their lips. A beat. A moment to go back. Dismissed. And like that they were crashing together.

It was fiercer than anything Richie could have anticipated, would have allowed himself to anticipate in this reality. Charged with years of unspoken desire, their mouths slotted together, apart, together. Richie found his mouth travelling from there down the strip of Eddie’s neck, as he, in turn, inserted a leg between Richie’s thighs, pressing to the hardness that was thoughtlessly rutting against him. He has no idea what’s going on, but Richie couldn’t stop, couldn’t think, wouldn’t ask until this was through. And, just like this, they fell at each other’s altars.

• • •

Later-- once they had been well-indulged, had managed some approximation of words to articulate their respective feelings, and had fallen asleep, exhausted, only to wake, sated, exhuming themselves from themselves and the damp hotel sheets-- they lay, lazy and languid, considering one another.

“It seems impossible that you’re here right now,” Richie chuckled, pressing his palm idly to Eddie’s abdomen. “You know, I almost can’t believe it…?” His hand halted there, pressing down ever so slightly, feeling for the softness of freshly-tilled soil.

“In fact, I….” His hand traced the spot. “I don’t. I don’t believe it.” He didn’t look at Eddie for confirmation, eyes trained to his own hand, squinting out a sad, knowing smile. “It’s like… This is a dream, right? Y’know, just: Breaking News! Thoroughly-Dehydrated Man Sees Mirage In the Desert! Shocker! Haha, yeah, I’ve… really lost it now, huh?”

Richie looked up at him, then. And Eddie was looking right back. His expression, however, was… what feeling was that? Heavy eyebrows bunched up his forehead, eyes were buggy-wide, mouth was parted as though stuck on a word. It escaped him for a moment. But Richie knew this one, he knew… 

Ah. Fear.

Before he could make sense of the shift in moods, Richie’s focus was pulled away by a wet feeling on his hand. He glanced down. Under the palm, at the edges and creases between his fingers, tiny red bubbles rose. They swelled and burst and streaked down Eddie’s sides. 

Eddie was bleeding out.

“What-- Hey no no no nononono hey hey Eds come on it’s alright it’s okay--” Richie swirled the thin white sheet around his hand like spaghetti on a fork and pressed it to the wound opening like a great maw at Eddie’s abdomen. Seeming to reject him, the more he pressed the more it gushed, the more he tried to focus the more tears blurred his vision, the more he wanted this to be okay the more it fucking wasn’t.

“Eddie hey Eds please, please tell me what to do please I can’t I just can’t keep doing this please I can’t--” he was barely comprehensible through a development of heaving sobs, but Eddie seemed to understand and looked at Richie then with a kind of clarity in his eyes, blinking away the fear, cutting through the pain like it was a showercurtain and deadening his own expression.

“I’m perfectly healthy, Rich.”

This ‘Rich,’ who had heard these nonsense words, and had been frozen for a moment, began compressing again, uttering a choke something like a laugh in the midst of his own sobs. “What? You’re, what? You’re not making any sense man you’re not okay you’re clearly not you’re fucking dying and again, AGAIN, I can’t do a thing and I--” His hands slipped on the outpour and for a moment Richie thought he’d fall into that hole.

“Richie.” Eddie held him with the word, his own name sounding alien to him with its odd force of emphasis, but holding him like a lasso just the same. “I’m fine. You hear me? I’m here. I’m speaking to you right, aren’t I? Do I sound like I’m in pain?” It was spoken clearly, too clearly, as though Eddie’s guts weren’t actively trying to escape a vacuum in his torso, with an enunciation as though speaking in a code Richie should well know. He wanted to know, by god he did, so he tried to focus, blinking away tears, vision half-shot by tear-streaked glass lenses. Shit he wished Eddie were right, wished none of this was happening, wished it more than anything.

…But, now that he thought on it... What had prompted this bleeding in the first place? Only moments ago Eddie had been hale n’ hearty, wound good n’ closed. Richie made sure of that, the truth laid bare beyond his eyes, as he stroked his nose down that tight torso, landed kisses down the delightful geography between pelvis and collarbone. Eddie was fine. They were fine. Hell, beyond fine, they were safe, until… 

“Yeah. No, yeah you’re right, you’re fine. We’re fine. We’re just talking, that’s all.” Richie tried to mirror Eddie’s nonsensically nonplussed look.

“Right. Actually, I was thinking of going out for a run after I clean up a bit, but if you want we can eat something first.” Eddie’s tone was level. Fucking conversational.

“Oh uh, yeah, sure. What-- what did you, um, want for breakfast?” He tried not to imagine Eddie, jogging along in his cute little shorts, slippery organs like eels squirming out of his tight and gaping core as it jostled with each buoyant step.

“Eggs. Don’t worry about picking anything up, I… brought some with me.” He smiled, a slim unease to it, and Richie felt like Eddie was again talking in some kind of code but wasn’t sure he was meant to understand it this time.

“You-- What? You bought eggs…? When? Like, a whole carton? No of course a whole carton you didn’t just pick them up freshly lain what am I saying y’know what, sure. Yeah no yeah. ‘Course. How about bacon?” 

Richie wanted to laugh, didn’t want to laugh,wanted to cry some more, felt like he was going insane, trying to maintain Eddie’s level of level-headedness after what just… No, that didn’t happen. Nothing happened. It couldn’t have happened or they wouldn’t be talking like this. Eddie’s steady gaze was the one thing grounding him to this reality. Balance-beam rules: just don’t look down.

“When would I have the time to pick up bacon? Dude, seriously?” Eddie got that tiny notch between his brows, incredulous. Richie’s hand itched. Dry.

“I dunno, man! When did you have time to get, fucking, eggs? No, y’know what? It’s fine. Keep your secrets.” He shrugged, jokingly exasperated, face tight from barely dried tears. Richie didn’t look at his hand, but lifted it away, favoring to press it to the mattress. Eddie laughed lightly.

“Okay, well, move and I’ll make some, you doofus,” he shifted easily from where he’d been propped against the headboard, shuffling around Richie and grounding himself with a hand to his bicep. It was warm. Richie’s skin tingled. Eddie’s feet landed on the floor, slipped into slippers, and he stood. He grabbed one of Richie’s shirts, left rumpled beside the bed, buttoning it up over his lightly-scarred and (un-punctured) softly-muscled skin.

“C’mon, get up. Make some coffee, I’m barely conscious here.” He tapped Richie’s shoulder lightly with a knuckle, Richie grabbing the hand to drop a soft kiss at each such bony protrusion before moving to follow orders.

“Yeh yeh, I’m on it. Youse da boss.”

“Dude, the fuck is that s’posed to be?”

“Um, mob henchman, obviously? Look at that fuckin’ rad scar on your face dude, you’re primo mafioso material. Pretty hot if I’m being honest. Anyway, why’re you getting dressed if you’re just gonna take a shower, man?”

“W-huh-- what?” Eddie blushed, either at the implication of resumed nakedness or the criminally-contiguous flattery, Richie wasn’t sure, but he could eat that look up. “Oh shit. Uh. Look, shut up and get the caffeine going, alright?”

“Oh! Yes sir! Right away, sir! Apologies, Mr. Kaspbrak~!”

“Flirty secretary, really?” Eddie tore out of the shirt as he spoke, too distracted by theatrics now to be self-conscious. “Can you commit to, like, one servile position for, just, half a second, nimrod?”

“Didn’t get enough of that earlier, huh?” Richie winked, still naked, rubbing rough hands lightly down his thighs and resting them at his painful knees. Eddie looked somewhere between furious and caught, face a bright pomegranate, before sharply turning with his hands above his head in exasperation.

“I AM GOING! TO TAKE! A SHOWER!”

“Yes, mistah K~!” Richie said in his best Harley Quinn impression. After one further groan evinced from the proximity of the bathroom, followed by a quick-closed door, Richie was left alone. 

He sat for a moment, trying to make sense of things. Trying not to make sense of things. Trying to… get up. Slipping hairy thighs into rumpled jeans, slipping muscled arms into rumpled sleeves (he’d grabbed the same shirt Eddie has unceremoniously shrugged off to the floor, a glaringly orange button-down with thin black and white trim), slipping slim buttons into crooked slots before realizing each was fastened one slot before its due. He left the misalignment as it was, and grabbed a pair of slacks and then a shirt from Eddie’s luggage: a soft, light blue polo.

Waking over to the bathroom with Eddie’s clothes draped over his arm like a butler, Richie caught a faint Something echoing from within the shower’s glass cage. As he approached, he heard more clearly Eddie’s humming just inside.

Richie’s hand had been hovering over the door handle, but he pulled back, instead leaning his back against the wall beside the door, listening. Eddie’s voice bouncing about the chamber in a soft and aimless tune, probably something he’d made up on the spot, seeming to self-consciously keep his voice down but unable to remain completely silent. Richie closed his eyes, lips twitched up, propped there completely at peace until the squeaked-off showerhead alerted him that one, he had spent too long lingering, and two, that now was a good time to pass over the clothes he’d been holding onto all this time.

Richie knocked on the door. “Hey, Eds, got your clothes buddy, can I open up?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure Rich, thanks.” Richie opened the door and saw Eddie stepping out of the shower, fresh and dripping, a renewed embarrassment freckling his face.

“Heya, hotstuff.” Richie waggled his eyebrows. Eddie quickly wrapped a soft towel around him and grabbed at the clothes.

“I’m not-- get out already so I can make breakfast you idiot.”

Richie leered at him for another indulgent moment before remembering his mission. “Oh, shit, the coffee.”

Eddie gaped. “Dude!! How long have I been in here like what could you-- possibly have been doing this whole time!?”

“Look man, you don’t know my life. Maybe I had some pressing... business... meetings.” He finished lamely.

“ ‘Business meetings.’ “

“Yeah, man! Business meetings!”

“Here, in Derry. In this hotel room.”

“Uh huh, like one of those phone… internet… web-video thingies. Yeah.”

“Ah, yes, how silly of me. Sorry to hold you up from your web-phone spreadsheet powerpoints and briefcase discussions. Tough work being a professional un-funnyman. Go on, don’t let me stop you.”

“Um, yeah, you SHOULD be sorry! And now that I FINALLY have ONE free moment, sure, I’ll get to making your coffee, like a damn intern. Just can’t catch a break, huh.”

“Ohmygod Richie it’s not that big a dea--” mid-ramble, Eddie found Richie pecking a kiss to his cheek. He lingered close for a moment, looking at his clean, warm skin, and those big, cartoon eyes, awed, reverent. Then--

“Eeek~! Put some clothes on, you perv~!” Richie squealed, pitching his voice up on his quick exit.

“Y-you--?! Just, coffee--! Coffee!!” Eddie whined behind the closing door.

Chuckling quietly to himself, Richie slipped away into the kitchen, setting about the task of gathering his coffee-making materials. Derry’s fine historic establishment provided such a machine, set for making one large cup or two small shots at a time via tiny bean pouch. He slapped one in and had just begun filling the device with water when Eddie abruptly appeared behind him. 

“JESUS, warn a guy, will ya? You’re cute, but not jumpscare-exempt cute.”

“Thanks for the coffee, Rich.” Eddie moved to rest his own hands on his hips, aborted the action, and shifted them tight across his chest. He was fully dressed now, the polo’s buttons yet unlatched, exposing a sharp edge of collarbone. A few lingering droplets streaked down, tracing the sweeping rigid outlines, falling somewhere unseen beneath the sky blue fabric. Richie traced their potential pathways with his eyes.

\--Then tore his eyes away. “No problemo, Eduardo.” In their stead, he caught sight of the kitchen counter, and a small nestled bundle that had appeared onto its surface. His coffee mission complete, he crept across the tiles to peek at its contents.

Inside, nestled close, were two black eggs. Were it not for their shape, he might have mistaken their color for basic paintwork, some kind of bizarrely macabre Easter inversion. But there was an uncanniness to them: a thin, webby film overlaid them, and their surface was subtly textured, infinitesimally small peaks and valleys forming convoluted cartographies, like a thousand thousand smaller eggs smashed together into two tight masses, their patterns drawing the eye with a hypnotically patterned pull. They did not look appetizing.

Richie considered asking where they came from, exactly, but instead,

“...This is your contribution to breakfast,” he blanched. 

“I mean if you want to go hungry feel free dude I won’t stop you.” And when Richie didn’t fight him, Eddie stepped past, scooping up the bundle in one fast fluid motion as though remiss of its being seen, in the same quick gesture latching onto the pan. He laid it down, grabbed the oil, and got to work. Richie stood on the other side of the kitchen island, leaning against it, faced away from the work at hand. He listened in for a crack of shells, skeptical he would hear any such sound based on their apparent and inexplicable surface material.

And yet, they did, the sound followed by a gratifying oily sizzle and an accompanying intoxicating smell. Richie’s olfactory senses had never felt quite so attended to, and he hovered over to the food and its maker, resting his chin on the latter’s shoulder.

When they were finished, Eddie laid the eggs individually on round white plates, pale webby membranes and blackish-ruby yolks, circles within circles repeating unto themselves. In completing the ensemble, Richie toasted their leftover bagels, halved them, and sat them beside the main course, soaking them in.

Richie’s old hunger waned a bit looking at them, their smell lightly rancid beneath the rich heat. Eddie peered over, taking note of his expression, and offered an odd little smile. I shall be pleasing, it said. Richie received his plate. He ignored the putrid eggy odor in favor of the warm, toasted bread, freckled with sesame seeds and streaked with melted butter.

They sat there, side-by-side, twin coffee mugs and yolk-soaked plates, thighs tap-taping between them, alongside thanks, given and taken, spilling down their throats.

• • •

_In the dream, Richie stood in the old arcade, standing not as it stood now, but as it had years ago. He was young here, and a boy stood beside him, grinning, face scrambling between a dozen sets of features. Richie looked to the screen, watching as his character died and died and died and died,_

_GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER_

_“Nice one, Richie!” the unresolved boy cheered, and Richie smiled shakily at his apparent success, clasping hands together in a code-twinged gesture, skinship shared just a bit too long. But where their hands should have slipped apart, at the juncture of their meeting the communal skin became a viscous fluid, like two caterpillars melded in a cocoon, dissolving and melting and melding to one. Thick, glue-like webs stretched out and then snapped, dried solid._

_Around them stood a slew of children, turning slowly towards them. Atop each pair of shoulders where there may have stood a head there was in its stead a single, bulbous eyeball, staring… knowing…_

_Richie tried to shake their hands apart, but while he did, a figure appeared in his periphery from the backmost doorway, shouting something he could not decipher and yet knew was meant for him. Turning, he saw… surely, something humanoid. But sickly, torn up, speckled and pock-marked and blistered with what looked like a child’s imagining of every disease spun into one._

_Even in the dream he knew instantly, this was the leper-- Eddie’s monster, not his. If it’s here, then Eddie must also be…! For a moment Richie was giddy, looking for his friend, before panic struck._

_He’ll see me, he realized. He’ll see me like this and he’ll know. Richie tried flailing his hand again, trying to tear the web apart, with the other boy looking on blankly, frozen at the same dumb smile as before. But it was morphing malicious now, as though to say, ‘Gotcha!’_

_So caught up was he in his aimless search for Eddie and these flailing attempts to free himself from his disloyal skin, Richie almost forgot about the Monster. It wasn’t in the form of Richie’s primary terror, after all. Nonetheless it made itself known, this sentient token of illness, in a hacking and coughing and spitting of blood in the direction of something that resembled and then became words._

_“Hrrckth-- thhrrgh---- thhhehhh---- thheh whheh--- hhhrwolf----- dh-did h-thisss.”_

_And as the words fell into place in Richie’s mind, a second figure appeared behind the leper, larger than it, looming. Covered in dark hair, ears pointed tall, eyes aglow and glaring._

_This… This had been Richie’s beast._

_And as their eyes met, it pounced._

_In one brief untraceable motion it leapt upon the leper, tearing at its throat, wringing it around like a dog might a squeak-toy or a squirrel. It did, in fact, squeak as blood flew from its jugular when one eager wolfish tooth had seemingly struck a vocal cord, a shrill whining and wheezing reeling from the torn flesh._

_For a brief moment, the wolf froze in its manic ministrations, glancing up at Richie, as though for permission. Around them and through it all, the bulging eyes had continued to glower unabated at Richie and Richie alone. The bloody display had not arrested them in the slightest._

_A cold sweat broke over his skin, and he ran. And ran, and ran and ran._

_And by the time he had looked back, somewhere along the line, the human skin-tag had broken off. Richie was older now. He was also alone. He thought it might have felt more freeing._

_Looking around him now, he saw himself standing in a wide open field. A raised platform stood before him. Absent upon it was its usual occupant, the behemoth Paul Bunyan taunting him with strong, immobile arms and wide, unblinking eyes. As he approached the platform’s beveled edge, Richie found that, rather than it growing with perspective as he closed the distance, step by step by step and it seemed to shrink before him._

_Only at the halfway mark does it occur to him - the stage had not grown smaller; Richie has simply grown. Taller than some treetops, big as Paul B., Richie loomed large. And as he glanced around, he saw people had gathered in the field around him. Stumbling about, eyes on the crowd, Richie backed away from the growing throng, trying to avoid stepping on any of them below. Careful… careful…_

_(crack.)_

_Like an eggshell Richie heard it sound but he did not look, only continued back, and back, (and crack, and crack) until the sole of his foot was met with the lip of the stage and he stepped upon it. He turned back just long enough to watch his rewound steps find even purchase._

_By the time he turned forward again, the field’s populace had found and taken seats, an audience to some unprompted performance. He had no words to give. His voice caught in his throat. Richie’s colossal and ungainly body cowered and shrank itself on the platform that could barely contain the breadth of him. Nothing, he had nothing to give them, nothing he wanted to give away. There was only one person he wanted to perform for. Same as always. If only he was…_

_As Richie stood there amidst their hungry silence, he felt a shudder._

_The rounded wooden floor beneath him did not crack with his weight. Instead, it simply split, swung open at the center like a trap door prepared in advance. Just before he fell through Richie saw his audience with a flash of clarity, faces plastic and clothes checked and grins gleaming._

_But then they were out of sight, flying up past as a dark subterranea consumed him. Richie lost sight of both sky and ground and for all of ten seconds he might have thought the world around him had blipped out of existence were it not for the whooshing resistance of wind. And then, (plunk.)_

_Richie hit the water before he felt it, plunging like an anchor rapidly down to the bottom. His feet sank into the floor like quicksand, only slowing as it hit his mid-calves. Richie squirmed until one leg squelched out of the muck. The other was immune, only pulling harder for all his resistance, suctioning him towards the forbidding earth. As it had in another (life) dream, he could breath here, beneath the waves._

_Breath was not the issue. It was the sodden, hungry earth._

_He looked around, seeking some structure from which to pull purchase. A branch, some seaweed, (an arm,) anything anything and he would take it. Instead, he caught sight of a fluttering glitter, blinking and blinding. It was a heliographic sort of light, floating and whispering overhead as a solitary beacon beyond the cloudy and oceanic dark. Richie tried to focus on it, to decipher whatever morse message it meant to deliver, but he lacked the language. So deprived of senses, he almost thought he heard, from up above, from the light, a v--_

_And then his eyes adjusted to the dark._

_And from that dark, he saw a reflection. A mirror. No, a wall. It stood around him, glass barricades bounding down upon all sides. If he broke it, could he breathe outside? Or was it too late? Had he not grown gills just to survive here? Necessarily devolved himself until he could withstand such a place? After all, this was… yes, it was an aquarium. No, a fish tank._

_Oh but he was small here. Such was ascertained by the figures standing just outside, looking down at him. Unseeing, except,_

_Eddie gazed down at him with quietly devouring eyes. (had he always looked at Richie this way? was it possible?)_

_Perhaps it had been his zipper that had caught the light, caught Richie’s vision in the muck. Eddie’s red overshirt shone near-fluorescent bright in the fishtank’s blooming glow. Beside him, Mike and Bill stood chattering amongst themselves, voices bouncing between them at a level nigh-incomprehensible outside their tight and dorky orbit. Eddie appeared unbothered and uninterested in this chatter, unwaveringly staring down with an unreadable look._

_Then, a warbled BWONGGG sang out somewhere behind the trio, and Eddie’s two neighbors turned to look. But where the reverberations might have naturally ceased in their water-warped echo, they only increased in octave, ratcheting up and up to a deafening roar._

_And at the juncture between Eddie and Richie, where their respective looks were interrupted only by glass, there arose a crack. It widened. It flared. Fractures scurried out from that single errant fleck until they consumed the very edges of the chamber. And for a moment it stood there, still and broken._

_(CRACK.)_

_Before a great flood sung out, surging rushing raging SCREAMING sweeping up ben and bev from where they hung out of richie’s sightline out further unseen pushing back mike and bill from where they cradled each other through the storm as Eddie stood stalwart amidst the onslaught, arms splaying out as richie poured out of the tank and he grew and grew and grew and fell into the open arms as more water than could have possible been contained in the tiny enclosure filled the restaurant and lifted the two of them up and up and up as they floated atop the waves that drowned the rest, and finally,_

_Eddie tilted his head back, inhaling long and deep; Richie held it there, slowly breathing out._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahahaha.... the length difference btwn chapters 1 & 2, huh!! (woops.) idk these 2 are just so damned chatty.
> 
> okay so like, i'd meant to keep this whole fic fairly brief (more just setting up a vibe/premise than anything), but once i got into the dialogue... well, they really just wouldn't shut the fuck up. then again that dynamic is why i love them so, ah well! what can ya do.
> 
> \--&that goes to say though, ch.3 will end up closer in length to this one.
> 
> ALSO i mentioned this in my last note but, legit: feel free to offer crit! this is already longer than any work of creative prose i've written, so i'm sure i've got plenty to learn here. for instance, would be curious to hear if rich&eds' respective voices feel natural & if they feel specific.
> 
> anywho, thanks for reading if you're still stickin' around! double-thanks if you assuage my doubts (positively or negatively) with a clarifying comment~? either way tho, it means a lot. :3


	3. Symploce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ I know I can never be forgiven,
> 
> I know my heart is illegal.
> 
> I have crossed the line into freedom land.
> 
> Have become one with trees, dirt, fangs, musk, high water,
> 
> and howls in the night. ”
> 
> \- Charles Bowden

Four living Losers went traipsing through the dark. Mike and Bill took the unargued lead, the former slightly stunting his pace in allowance of the latter’s. Behind them, Ben and Beverly followed close by, the one’s hand clenching desperately at the other’s. Dull aches of the Derry Town House’s old-age pains echoed ardently about them, warbling and warping the wood-creak cacophony as though in an infinitely self-reflecting funhouse mirror.

Amidst the dull clamour, a voice eked out of the shadows.

“Who comes trip-trapping on my bridge?”

“Ms. Starrett…?” Ben whispered, hopeful.

It was a dead-ringer, after all, to the cheery public librarian they’d all known and grown up with, putting on her cutesy story-time intonations of picture-book villainy.

“Ben, stay back. She’s--” Beside him, Bev tugged their clasped hands closer to herself as her companion took a couple wary steps ahead.

“Bzzt bzzzzt~!” the pseudo-librarian interrupted them via gameshow buzzer. “Sorry, Benjamin, but little Miss S. is fucking dead!”

Then, out of the black of the Town House hallway, there emerged two figures, huddled close, clasping hands. In them there stood a perfect picture of antithesis: black hoodie next to white, tall neighboring petite (comparably), grin beside grimace. Of some note, the smaller body also bore an impossible, cavernous wound at the core of its torso, showing clear through to the hallway behind. Betwixt the two’s laced fingers sprung a bouquet of red balloons, forming a buoyant pyramid overhead, its peak nudging at the ceiling. Meanwhile in their unclung hands they held instead to respective weapons: for the shorter, a sort of spear; for the taller, an axe.

The axe man unlatched his grin to speak.

“WELCOME TO RICHIE TOZIER’S ALL-DEAD ROCK SHOW, SUCKERS!”

The Losers gawked at the display, exchanged a look. The tension eased slightly from their faces as they made efforts to untangle the image before them.

“Oh, h-hey, Rich--? You s-sssuh-scared us. W-whuh-what are you doing here? I mean, I t-tried to call you but it never reached...” said (guess-who) Bill, telltale stutter sneaking back in.

But, before they could continue under this line of thought, in near-unison the quadrad spotted an accompanying figure, propped quietly beside his louder counterpart.

“...Is that...?” Ben began.

“Dun da da duuun~!” Richie sang out. “Eddie Spaghetti, in the flesh! Turns out, you throw him at the wall, he does stick! Who’d’a thunk?”

“Hi, guys.” Eddie waved his spear sociably.

“Oh, um, hi, Eddie.” Ben waved back, awkward, before Bev shot him a scorching and baffled look.

“Wait, but Eddie, how’re you…?” Mike started, awestruck, before Bill squeezed his arm, mirroring Beverly’s apprehension.

“Eddie d-d-died. I w-wouldn’t have... l-left him if there w-was eh-even a chance he c-could make it. So, e-e-e-e-either--”

“Either I’m a fake or there’s been some kind of devil’s bargain-- is what you’re thinking, right--?” Eddie interjected like a particularly studious student who’d jumped ahead on the text.

“--Buuut!” Richie continued, “Rest assured, when it comes to Eddies, I accept no alternatives!” He pistoned his arm like the happy customer he was.

“Rich, he….” Bev took a step towards the duo, hands out, placating. “Eddie died. And it hurt all of us, even worse to have to leave him there, but that can’t be… you can’t… You’ve gotta move on.”

“That can’t-- what, exactly? He’s right there, you’re gonna say that to his face? Wow, Ringwald. And, oh-- oh, what? I’M the one who hasn’t moved on?” Richie shifted, not releasing Eddie’s hand, clinging harder, but slouching in that strange way that somehow cast shadow, made him loom. “--When we’ve got boy-crazy Beverly Marsh, ping-ponging between men’s dicks until one of them saves her? My oh my, who will it be~? Billverly or Benverly~? I’m on the edge of my seat! Truly, a dilemma for the ages, babe. Have you really moved on from dirty ol’ daddy if you’re just out there soliciting for your newly-minted fuckable guardian?”

Beverly’s face darkened, but Richie pushed on, somehow animated by the animosity.

“Ah, and speaking of which, Mr. Handsome! Yes, yes, Benjamin… Fatties are truly the most oppressed minority out there, aren’t they? Suuuch an inspiration. And, honestly, it’s a heartwarming morality tale: that, if you just so happen to be hot enough under all that, ugh, EXCESS, maybe you’re actually worth loving! But-- I mean, can you imagine, getting all skinny only to end up with a different flavor of uggo? Yikes, then you’d really have to give up! But, thankfully, Benjy, yours was a true before-and-after triumph.”

  
Ben wrapped arms around a torso, reassuring himself of his lack.

“Next up, there’s our little archangel Michael, swooping into our sad little lives and spreading the good word. Tell me, d'you think flying out of Derry is really gonna be your saving grace? Or--? Have you realized you’re just going to find that same ol’ rancid hate everywhere, loop another gaggle of chumps back onto your next holy mission-- and your next, and next, over and over watching them fall over the ledge ‘til you and they're good and gone? Was Stan really not enough for you? Need a few more slit wrists to make that sacrifice stick?”

Mike tried to remain neutral, but hurt leaked through the cracks.

“And last but oh, dear me, never least! Nooo, oh no, never least! Yes, we’ve got our fearless leader, our own local Billiam Shakespeare! Our local celebrity, ringing every drop of marketability out of that lifelong pain. Grief and trauma can be quite the boon, can’t they, huh? Real hot money-makers? Ah, don’t look at me like that, man, gotta do what you can to make it last, I get that! At the end of the day we’re all ‘survivors,’ y’know, so that justifies whatever we do, right? Whatever floats your boat, ain’t that right B-b-billy boy~?”

Bill quaked; glowered.

For a moment they all stood that way, in affronted, aghast, petrified, ferocious silence, unable to look at each other, gazes skittering between Richie’s demented expression and the fraying carpet below.

“Beep-beep, Richie.” Eddie sighed at last, cutting through the quiet. He pressed idly at his own wounded cheek, slipping an index finger lightly into the lips of the gash, a streak of fresh blood stroking down his face at the gesture. “Geez, you never did know how to shut up, huh?”

Mike looked to the wounded man. “...Eddie, there’s no way you can be okay with this, right?”

“L-look, I d-d-don’t know what’s guh-gotten into Rich, but,” Bill chimed in, belatedly recalling his leadership obligations at Mike’s prompting. “If this s-somehow reh-r-really is you... Eddie, you w-were always able t-to t-temper him. You’ve guh-gotta--”

“Oh, what, do we not look like we’re on the same page--? Here--?” Eddie interjected, Richie puffing his chest up at the assurance. “Please. I spent my whole life terrified to death - OF death - terrified of anything that might remotely inch me closer to it. But now? Now that it’s in my past--?” the finger at his cheek dug in, blood sputtering up his hand, his spear, flecks dappling his forearm. “What’s there left to fear? Right, Rich?”

“Right-o Spaghetti-o!” Richie saluted, ankles clicking together in mock military form. His smile was giddy, manic, hair wriggling in crazy curls across his forehead.

The four living Losers stood, still, lost. Bev’s eyes bore into Rich with brimming hurt. Ben kept looking down, face drawn, arms hugging a frame too thin to be any healthier than its adolescent paunch. Mike and Bill shared a glance, each expecting the other to instigate some plan of action, both halted by the weight of history, before the latter finally looked up and away, eyes shut tight as though to block out the Sun.

“Georgie…” Bill choked out. “Yuh-y-you’re going to make it all s-suh-s-start again. There w-will b-b-buh-be another G-g-g-eorgie.”

“We stopped It, we were done!” Beverly shouted out. “We stopped It we stopped It we STOPPED!!! IT!!! How DARE you--?!?”

For a moment Richie deflated at this last, but then his eyes drifted to his side and he steadied himself again. “Pretty easy, actually. You know me, put me between truth and dare, and, well, I’m no truther.”

Bev schooled her expression, “Well, why not start now? I mean, we’ve got nothing to lose, right? So tell me a truth, Richie: is that even really Eddie standing next to you?”

Richie stared her down, the toothy grin still on his face but his eyes cold-hard as silver slugs. “You think I’d bring back a sock-puppet? Risk it all, throw those years in the gutter, for a pseudo-semi-cockeyed-Eds? Oh no, if I’m going in on insurrection it’s only gotta be ALL in. If anything, I brought back Eds and maaaybe a little something extra. And if the little extra something is the non-negotiable side to the main dish, hey man, I’ll take it. A simple onion ring amidst a box’a fries.”

Ben’s eyes, previously lost in thought, widened then, clasping a hand to his mouth. “Eggs. There were… Thought i was going crazy, but I saw... eggs. In a dream. Or another world? Down there. Or a version of it. Did It…? Were they…?”

“Wow, how’d you know Eds and I had eggs for breakfast? Black eggs and ham. Golly, they was purty big though, I h’aint think they were from no dern chicken.” Richie slunk into his hackneyed southernisms.

If Ben’s eyes were wide, Bills were now bursting veins, furious with a sudden, certain realization. “It... It--! IT--!! IT H-H-H-HAD CHUH-CH-CHI-CHILDREN?! AND YOU--?!?” He screeched out disjointedly with a bountiful spray of spittle.

“Mm. Tasty.” With one hand, Richie rubbed happy circles in the air over his belly, and with the other, tugged at Eddie’s limp hand to repeat the motion over his companion’s gaping stomach.

Silence hung for a moment. It was Richie’s normal sideshow antics, and they almost wanted to laugh despite themselves, were it not for a looming fear.

“...So it was you two, right?” Mike piped up, “Garton, Dubay, Unwin…”

“Y’mean those little twerpy homophobes? Oh, yeah we killed them. Obviously.”

“W-w-w-e w-were supposed t-to be…” Bill spat, “b-b-b-b-better than the-ehm. T-to k-k--”

“Kill the killers and aren’t you just as whatever whatever as who cares? Standard moral bullshittery? Yeah well, so we were at the head of the train and on one rain there was this bundle of bigots and on the other there was them NOT dying, so I said, know what? Fuck ‘em.” Richie sniffed, rubbing idly at his nose. “What good’s the moral high-ground if not for the great aim?”

“Rich…” Bev intoned, stern. “What do you want here, huh? We came here to find out who’s started back up with the killing only to find our… one of our own…? What do you really expect out of this? D’you really hate us all that much? After everything we’ve been through?”

“Not hate.” Eddie whispered. His big doe eyes peered up at all of them then. “I mean, you know, I love you guys. And that’s why…” he held out one pallid hand. “I want you with me. What d’you have to lose?” The hand hung there for a moment, vainly entreating.

“Eddie…” Mike sounded more dismayed than anything.

Bill, however, sounded repulsed. “Yuh-you expect us to b-b-betray everything w-we f-fought for, f-f-f-f-or what? Ih-immortality? Some kind of m-muh-monstrous extended life?”

“Heck yeah!” Richie cheered, “Losers never say die! Wha’d’ya say?”

“No.” Bev’s eyes bored like an ice pick into Richie’s. “Obviously.”

Ben looked slantwise at them. “But what…. What do you guys plan to get out of this? Truly, though?”

Richie rolled his shoulders, shifting gears. “Well well… See, thing is, we killed the metaphor, but, y’know what? We never got around to killing the thing itself! Derry’s still goin’ strong, marching on to its ol’ deathcult beat.” He let the smile slink off his face. “So, far as I see it, we’re not done here.”

“Rich. What do you mean by “killing” Derry, exactly?” Mike used his customer-service voice, an obscenely placating calm in the face of madness.

“Well, see, when I was being a big ol’ trash-mouth, as you’ve all well-witnessed, my ma would whip out the soapbar and give my mouth a rinse. So, I figure, Derry, for all its filth, could use a wash-down of its own!”

“Richie, what--” Bev cut in, exasperated.

“Let’s put it another way for you numbskulls: I’m thinkin’ Noah was onto something!”

“...A flood?” Mike breathed it out.

“Richie. That’s enough.” Bill’s stutter smoothed itself out. “It’s clear you’ve lost all reason here. That you don’t seem to care about... consequences, not anymore. And if that’s the case… well. You know what we have to do.” He steadied his footing, leveled his stance.

“Eddie, Richie, it doesn’t have to be this way.” Ben finally met their eyes, looking solemn.

“Do you think your own loss offsets the rest? Do you think the rest of us haven’t had our share of hurts? Have you forgotten? And, what’s more, you’ve decided you want to grant us a few more?” Bev practically frothed at the mouth, face as red as her hair. “We’re not gonna roll over just because you’re sad, - ALL of us are - or because you’re not coping, because god have we been at the very least TRYING. It’s time to grow up, Tozier.”

“I love you guys. I want you to know that.” Mike looked at them with such an abundance of warmth he practically glowed. “I mean, Eddie, I was so proud to see you - after your mother spent all her efforts on making you feel small - to see you defy that, and save all of us in the process. And Richie-- you were carrying so much fear and shame for something you should have been proud of, but you were always the one trying to cheer us up. Both of you-- I’ll never forget what you’ve meant to me… And yet,” his smile flat-lined. “I’ll never forgive what you’ve done.”

Through all this, Eddie had maintained a bland grimace and a cool, distant attention, while Richie had held his flat, nutcracker grin. At the apparent halt in their respective monologues, Richie started to wriggle and stretch like a distractible student at the end of a particularly dull lecture.

”Well, gee, if you’re all gonna be so adamant about it--” Richie clasped a hand over his heart as though in a Boy Scout’s pledge. But his hand didn’t stop there. It pressed down, inward… grasping… clasping… tearing at the flesh. Blood gushed around his plunging fingers, He held out his prize. They beheld Richie Tozier’s still-beating heart, convulsing on his open palm, pumped-blood slipping through his fingers down upon the floor.

“C’mon. Take it! What’s the hold-up, guys?” Richie looked around at all the motionless Losers, gesturing at each of them in turn, lunging a bit toward Ben, who in turn cowered behind Bev.

“Dude, gross.” Eddie cringed beside him.

“Aww, Eds, don’t get jealous.” Richie shimmied his shoulders in his companion’s direction. “You’re the only one who ree~eally has my heart~!” Eddie huffed a reluctant laugh.

“C’mon guys, it worked last time, tight? What, no takers? Fine,” he unceremoniously shoved his heart back into his gaping chest cavity. “So, where does that leave us? You’re not joining us OR killing us-- what? Are you just gonna leave? Let us off the hook of your flighty moral standards, nice and easy?”

“You know we can’t let you do that, Rich.” Ben said to the floor, shuffling in place.

“Oh, alright, Mr. HAL-scom, hah… Hm, maybe a stretch. Anyway, then what?” Richie grimaced, impatient. “Tell me, guys, where are our heads at here, huh? Come on, chop chop. Or else, y’know, CHOP CHOP.” He punctuated these last two with minor flicks of an axe-wielding wrist.

“That leaves us,” Mike stepped forward. “...With your leaving us.”

“Geez, enough with the dramatics. And I thought I was the natural entertainer! You don’t want to do it the easy way but you still wanna do it, huh?”

“We don’t want to.” Bill whispered. “We never did.” 

“Fine fine fine FINE fucking FINE, if THAT’S how we’re going to be--!” Richie shifted his stance, setting his feet, tilting his head, grasping at the axe with both hands now, winding it heavily down between his legs, back and forth like a pendulum. “Then let’s change the conversation.”

Beside him, Eddie appeared almost unchanged. But a keen eye would notice: an onyx hardness about the eyes, and a slight, lithe tightening of the form, as though before a pounce.

“Richie?! D-d-don’t--!” Ah, there he was. “Wh-h-h-o d-do you thuh-think you are?!”

“So, this here’s Peter Pan,” Richie gestured lazily at Eddie with the flat of his blade. “And me--? Well… I’M PAUL FUCKING BUNYAN!” The axe lashed out, blade slicing even with Bill’s neck, angled narrowly away from its biting edge.

“C’mon, Eddie, get your saddle shoes on! We’re going out DANCING tonight and, this time, we’re playing ALLLLLL THE HITS!” And sure enough Richie was doing a jig of sorts, actively idling on the tips of his toes where he stood, ready to lunge. Eddie didn’t answer, or appear to be lumbering up in such a manner, simply hunching, leaning eyes into the shade of his brow, glowering.

Away from Ben and Bev, the leftover losers fell back. Bill leaned against the peeling wallpaper, hyperventilating. Mike rallied around him, an outstretched arm guarding his front. Ben had fallen onto his backside in the clamour, quivering as he stared blindly at the axe. Bev meanwhile eyed Richie considering. She feinted back, gaze steady, then rushed toward him. Before she could make any ground Eddie lanced the spike by her ear, clipping it just enough to bleed.

“Hey Bev. Did you know?” Eddie muttered. “It kills monsters… if you believe it does.”

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Ben clamoured up from where he’d been glued to the floor and leapt at Eddie, who met him halfway, clutching at something in his pocket before thrusting it in his aggressor’s face.

The aspirator cliched between Ben’s teeth.

“Battery acid.” Eddie said simply, without inflection, and pulled the trigger.

“H-HRMMMMPPHH--!?!” Beneath the nozzle, Ben’s face scrunched as his eyes flared and watered, rolling back, and a guttural noise rose from his throat and spilled out from around the device. The fiery acidic bite was familiar to Ben’s esophagus, but the intensity was not, and he burned with the taste of it.

“Bastard! Let him go--!” Beverly found her bearings and headed towards him, clutching a broad chunk of broken windowpane lain aimlessly on the dingy carpeting, just as Bill and Mike seemed to find their own similar resolve, closing ranks on the pair.

“STOP.”

And they did.

The voice had roared as though from every edge and every surface. The surround-speaker proclamation took on a uniquely authoritative intonation for each individual Loser: Beverly, Bill, and Mike hearing their own respective fathers, scolding them brusquely for some harmless romp; and for Ben, his mother, sounding exhausted and uniquely disappointed. In that moment, they were all small, quivering children, awaiting a strike that for none but Bev ever truly fell.

It took several moments before anyone moved again, necks twisting towards the sound of Richie’s bubbling laughter.

“Oh man, you are all a bunch of goodie little boys and girls, aint’cha?” He coughed out between chuckles. “Wow, you guys... Really, WOW. Seek therapy.”

“FUCK YOU.” Bill and Bev shouted in unison, clearly and without humor.

Richie unleashed a slew of full-belly laughs at this, clinging onto and leaning into Eddie’s forearm for dear life. Eddie himself granted him a frowning, familiar, embarrassed-but-not- surprised glance before shoving him fondly away.

“How can you think this is funny? How can either of you think this is funny?? Richie, Eddie, this. This ends, no----” Abruptly, and while he said this, Bill twitched visibly, and turned away from them all, and walked towards the stairs, and down them.

“...Bill?” Mike reached vaguely in his direction.

“That’s enough. Let’s go, I don’t think we’re getting through to them anyway. We’ve been splintered too many ways, we need to regroup, live to fight another day…”

“Bill…” Bev sounded disheartened, but the spitfire was put out of her voice. Ben got up off of his knees, shook a bit, held the stairway railing, and nodded at her.

“There’s so few of us now. Maybe we need to add to our ranks, build a new Loser’s Club. But Bill, know that we’re with you no matter what.” Mike looked remarkably more world-weary than ever, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Eddie, Richie, take this as a victory if you’d like, but don’t imagine we’re through with you. It won’t be another twenty-seven years this time around.” And with this, Mike swept around Bill, draping an arm around his shoulders protectively.

Bill said nothing, continuing down the stairs in rigid silence. The rest followed, solemn, cutting glances backward, bitter. The losers left, and the lovers lingered.

Had Bill been facing them, the Losers might have noted that his declaration of retreat had a strange, distant quality to it. That his mouth was open, but the voice, though precisely his own, seemed to have traveled from elsewhere, poured forth from a far-flung mouth. Had they looked toward Richie, rather than their own fearless leader, they might have even caught his lips moving.

•••

As Derry drowned, houses shuddered and windows shattered and offices quaked and crumbled and phone lines were ripped and whipped about and trees were uprooted and weathervanes thunderstruck and no one was spared. By the end of the onslaught, even the wreckage was re-debilitated to a point of unrecognition. As rain continued to fall over the town, distantly, four of its previous tenants found their memories of the selfsame place similarly wiped clean. Removed, renewed. And by the time the downpour had ceased, and the wind died, and the lightning no longer flickered about the sky and the thunder no longer clapped and roared about the clouds, there staid two upstanding survivors: a battered old maple tree, inwardly rotten, and, directly beside it and upheld by its trunk, a tall church clocktower, ticking impossibly onward. And as the world settled about them both, the tower bell, finally, chimed. It bellowed out a clamorous, rigorous, victorious tune, for no living ears to hear.

•••

A man somewhere in California woke up to a banal, quavering sound. He ignored it for a time, and it stopped. Who was this man? Ah, just a moment, a moment if you please… Well, before that, there was someone next to him, and that was, of course… Eddie Kaspbrak. In that case, this was Richie Tozier!

Oh but he had been losing things, hadn’t he? Losing names. And losing time, specifically. Eddie and him, sleeping together, sleeping deep and long, and days might pass that way. Weeks. A solid month. And when they would wake, rested and ravenous, and together they’d rebuild the world around them, where they were, who they were, what they had to do. Somehow, still, they never forgot who they were to each other. And that was what found their way back. That, and Eddie’s inner compass of course.

The phone buzzed again on the bedside table, shaking… shaking… falling down. Richie lifted it up from off the floor.

“Y~ellow?” he strung out amicably.

“How could you.” It was not a question when it rushed out of Mike’s mouth, and so it begged no answer. In the background Richie heard a deep, frenzied revving. Someone nearby stuttered something out before being cut off by an unseen gesture. Richie could see it as clearly as though he were there: Bill at the wheel, nervously peering over at a Mike sitting shotgun with a face pressed seriously, almost mournfully, into his outdated cell.

“Aha, Michelangelo, my favorite Ninja Turtle! How long’s it been? No, really. Wow, you remember me, huh?”

The first question Mike ignored, likely imagining it rhetorical. “I’m not sure how you did it, but guess I’m stronger than you, because I’m remembering now.” He sounded like an honest-to-god movie hero, and frankly Richie was impressed, pleased even with this Chosen One recast. Bill was everyone’s big brother, sure, but Mike was always the one really pulling the weight in Club Loser.

“Aw, c’mon buddy, don’t be mad. Have something to eat, maybe some pizza, you’re probably just hangry.” Richie aimlessly paced the room, slipping on his thick glasses frames.

“Richie, be serious. It’s no exaggeration to say this is life-and-death.”

“Uh, bingo! Eddie was dead, and now he’s alive! Everything’s muy bueno now, show’s over man! Didn’t we cover this already?” Richie peered over at the man himself, sleeping soundly in his apartment’s king-size bed, way too wide for him for way too long, before this. He reached a hand down to comb through Eddie’s muss of brown hair, sweeping around to dip a thumb to his chin before pecking a light kiss to his cheek.

“Richie, you know what I mean. I love Eddie, same as you, but his life isn’t worth everything it will cost-- has cost already. And why? Tell me, what’s the body-count at now, Rich--?”

Richie seemed to ignore the question in favor of the phrasing. “So, you love him, ‘same as me,’ huh? Wow. wow wow wow, can’t believe he’s two-timing me already, the little minx~!”

“Ugh, Richie, beep-b….” Mike cut himself off, letting out an abrupt sound, as though having spotted a splatter of roadkill in the middle of the highway and realizing in quick succession that it was there, and then, that it could not be saved.

”The Turtle couldn’t do it. There’s your fucking why. Hmm, no, sorry that’s wrong, actually-- he COULD, he just felt his time was better used elsewhere. Y’know, nibbling at a galaxy, farting out some black holes, whatever greater denizens of the cosmos do. What’s a few dead kids to our good cold-blooded almighty? Oh, and so, as far as the state of our so-called ‘body-count’ goes-- for those who didn’t deserve it? None.”

“Look, I’m not saying what the Turtle did was okay. Or what he didn’t do, either. But that’s not the point -- for whatever reason, whether chosen by fate or sheer coincidence, we were given the power to do what he couldn’t.”

“Hm, big deity fan here. Eat any Turtle eggs lately, Mikey?”

“I don’t--” Mike interrupted himself again, a wistful pause, but what occurred to him in that silence went unshared. “Look, I don’t want to do this, by god Richie I don’t, but we can’t… I never wanted Stan to die and I never wanted Eddie to die but you can’t expect me to let this stand. Too many people have already lost their lives to It. Don’t you remember? This actually isn’t just about you.

And you know what? I’ve gone easy on you. Sure, you suffered. Being queer in Derry was never an option, and folks in town made it clear as day so you’d never forget. And maybe it’s not fair to run competitions with our traumas, but, know what? YOU could pretend. You at least had that. You could play the straight man and they’d be none the wiser but I’m locked-fucking-in, Rich. I never had a choice. And this shouldn’t come as a surprise but they wanted me dead most of all. Only reason I made it out unscathed was by sheer underexposure. If I went to the same school as all of you, if they had to see my face every day, in the hallways in the classroom, not on a ranch or in a library, I’d have been first to the gutter.

But that’s not what I’m calling to talk about. Derry is what Derry does. Or what it did. Or it was. It’s more than that. My whole life was spent studying Derry, its veneer and its underbelly. And I never told you guys most of it, maybe that was just my naive attempt at mercy. Sparing you. End of the day, is a lie really mercy? But there was just so much… so much viciousness. Senseless death. Stupid, banal cruelty. Pure and untempered chaos. And for years, for whole generations, not a single person doing a thing about it. Not really. Not enough, at least. Not enough to stick. 

Honestly, in my travels, I’ve found most of this country just the same. Different strains of the same disease. But somehow… Somehow, Richie, we did it. That evil is a kind of hydra, but we’d killed one head, for good. Against all odds, it was us Losers. Bunch of scrappy kids with something to prove and people to live for and nothing to lose. And you’re prepared to undo it all, and for what, Rich? For what?”

(nothing to lose, huh.)

Richie shrugged, the gesture unseen.

“Who knows.” But he knew well enough.

•••

_In the dream, Richie stood, lanky and uneasy, in the dull white void. There was a sort of screen before him, a tight skin upon which played the dancing hazy lightshow of images spun from an invisible film projector. They were flashes of Eddie Kaspbrak’s life, flickering in and out before Richie Tozier’s eyes. The screen was canvas, stretched tight and sturdy between spider-web strings. Richie was familiar with most of the images, all those childhood years when Eddie went from pipsqueak-small to a gangly median, heavy brow warily shading eyes that were bright and covertly fearsome._

_The images clicked steadily forward from there, until they reached the ones Richie never knew: a collegiate Eddie, cap-and-gown pressed and face unimpressed, an engaged Eddie nervously tasting cake flavors with a fear toward allergies yet to be discovered, an Eddie on his first day analyzing risk professionally, looking wound-tight but resignedly comfortable. In all of these latter photos, the down-turned “C” of his mouth no longer betrayed a restrained wry humor, and the captivating depth of his eyes looked here dulled and misty like well-worn seaglass. Richie felt a twinge at this, at these years he wasn’t there to bring on the chucks, to keep him light and laughing and doubting his self-doubts, pulling pigtails and pissing the poor kid off until he’d forget his fear out of pure rage. It was selfish, of course, too. A greed for years that weren’t ever his to bear._

_Before the Kaspbrak-avarice could settle in, though, the projected images shifted again. To the “leper” who’d terrified Eddie, to the clown and his topsy-turvy pyramid of balloons, images that passed over Richie’s eyes dully, unfazed and unafraid after all that had transpired since. Then came the well-house, the spider’s lair, pipes beneath Derry. And Eddie’s (corpse) body. Cold analytical shots, as though by a forensics team for a grizzly murder scene, craning close to the gaping maw of a wound at his core. The organs, dangling, punctured, torn, and the bones, cracked or missing. Richie felt his gut churning and writhing with a readiness to purge, his skin feeling clammy and hot-cold with sudden fever._

_The images flicked faster then, faster faster, until they became a movie interrupted only by the intermittent occulting of light. They had panned out to Eddie’s face, eyes beginning to brim with a kind of life, as he spoke._

_“Rich, I did it! I-- I think I killed it! Yeah, we did it! Richie! It’s gone, for good! --Right?”_

_Suddenly Richie felt his way back into the moments after Mike’s first phone-call, a seeming eternity ago, the way he had pooled together his funds and fled unexplained from the duties of his life on the hint of a harebrained promise, and how it had occurred to him, then, how easy it was to destroy everything you had worked for. How he had spent years filling that locked safe, chasing leads and fighting agents and busting his ass off to earn that chunk o’ change… but in the span of a moment the decision was made then the money spent and then the distance travelled the life imperiled. It was so, so stupidly easy to break…_

_On the screen Eddie was still talking to him, but something in his tone was changed. He was smiling thinly, and leaking red from both bulging eyes and gaping chest, ears and nostrils, bleeding out from every orifice, looking apologetic and vaguely embarrassed at the display._

_“I’m sorry, Richie, for looking at you that way. I’m so… so sorry. The truth is, I think… I deserve this. Because I infected you, too, Richie. I made you like me. But it’s alright, it’s going to be alright now - the sickness is spilling out of me. It’s starting to… Yeah, it’s doing it. I can’t feel a thing, Richie. Not now. Not anymore. Not even for you. Not ev… ven… for you…” Eddie clutched at his puncture-wound, but not to cover it. Rather, he was clawing at it, finding the edges, pulling away, making it wider, letting the blood fountain its way down._

_Flowing in pace with his blood Richie let his tears pour down then without shame. After all, shame was Its domain, what was forcing this facsimile of Eddie to say these things, to feel these things, to want to feel nothing. Richie bunched his fists then, striking at the canvas._

_He did it again, and again, his blows ricocheting off like children off of bouncy-castle trampolines, insubstantial. Insufficient. The thwack-thwacking became a rhythm in his head, steady as a metronome, but full of fury, building with each passing second. For one such second Richie felt almost as though he had found some purchase, reached some crucial juncture that would unwield the merciless screen. His confidence roared, and he hit harder, but at this he bodily flew back. (stop hitting yourself, trashmouth!) He had lost his stance but not his footing, and he struck again, the image of Eddie warping into Pennywise giving foux-sobs as he grabbed at his small intestine and seemed to be trying to contort it like a balloon animal._

_“EDS IS DEADS EDS IS DEADS EDS IS DEADS~!!!” the Pennywise mirage sing-songed out, blinking frantically until Its eyes were full black._

_“Shut up SHUT! UP!”_

_But it wasn’t Pennywise. It was still Eddie’s face, and then, his own, just marred in the same cake of white and slashes of red, eyes glinting like nocturnal glimmers in the night._

_“Hyuk hyuk, wowie, well you’re one to talk about shutting up, huh Trashmouth?” Richiewise giggled._

_“LOOK I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU DO! I DON’T CARE WHO YOU “FLOAT!” YOU CAN GOBBLE THIS WORLD DOWN TO THE CORE AND YOU WON’T HEAR A PEEP FROM ME, BOZO! BUT EDDIE--! EDDIE----!!! HE! ISN’T! YOURS!” Richie punctured the words between clenched teeth and an onslaught of bloody knuckles. At the last, there was a_ crack.

Richie was standing in his bathroom. He was in his apartment, in L.A. His mirror was shattered. The crack in his glasses, however, was gone, as though in bartered exchange. His visage hung before him in scaly fragments, the thunderflow of cracks bunched at the locus of its center, a dented cavernous disk leaving a shallow well where his face should be. The evening sun bubbling at the fringe of the horizon was red, glazing the mirror in sacrificial light.

“...Rich?” a quiet voice came from the other room.

“Eddie, my love,” he breathed. He could say these things now, not in jest but earnest.

“Come here,” and Richie did, walking over to Eddie, who met him halfway. He pressed up against Eddie, feeling solid, feeling whole.

“I’m here, Eds.” Richie wrapped himself around his lover as thoroughly as he was able, straining middle-aged limbs to their outermost limits, a shell to shield as much surface area as possible.

“Richie, you know I…” Eddie began, stopped.

“Go on,” Richie nudged at the crown of Eddie’s head with his nose.

“Rich, you know I, uhm, love you, right?” Eddie nuzzled into his chest, the heat radiating off of his face and seeming to seep directly into Richie’s blooming, beating heart.

“Hey, Eddie, did you know--?” Richie began, hoping Eddie wouldn’t notice or complain about the snot and tears starting to dribble unsubtly into his neatly-styled hairline.

“...Yeah?” Eddie sounded breathless.

“Eddie, I, um, sorry, but… I never fucked your mom. I was never your real daddy.”

“Hey, Richie?

“Yeah?”

“Die.”

Richie yell-laughed brutally and directly into Eddie’s skull. “Audience, he is NOT the father! OooOOOooh!” He clapped his hands together behind Eddie’s head, bobbing up and down on his toes in Eddie’s arms as though doing a small jog down a stage.

“We are, literally, the same age, you could not possibly--”

“Also, I’velovedyouallmylifeorwhatever,” the words were a spurt out of Richie’s mouth in unbridled succession. Eddie’s nose tracked a line up between Richie’s pecs as he craned to look at him. 

“Richie…” Eddie’s thick brows raised and pinched like an upturned arrowhead on his forehead. The “go on” goes unspoken, but Richie hears it, and relents.

“Aw geez c’mon, you know! I…” Richie cups Eddie’s face in his hands, then, thumbs tracing where his little dimples would peek through upon a smile. “Eds. I love you. So… So fucking much. My whole life. And, no fake, Jake, that life, it’s yours. All of it.”

Tears were an even stream down Richie’s face by then, but, at this point, he was resigned to the recurrent embarrassment. He would accept this perpetually mortified life over that morosely petrified un-life. As Eddie’s face slowly scrunched under his palms, Richie’s thumbs dipped into the happy little divots of his cheeks, feeling the smile more than seeing it through his splotchy glasses and blur-water eyes. It was enough to tear Richie’s own overwhelmed expression into a widely earnest, squeeze-eyed grin. He knocked his forehead to Eddie’s, then pulled back, kissing where he’d knocked, then craned down, kissing where his thumb had caressed, then inched over, kissing him truly, deeply now, breathing him in.

They walked themselves back, stumbling blindly toward the bed, bathed in a vermillion light. They plunged into each other, swimming deep into mutual ravines, making themselves known, felt, with the knowledge of a boundless sprawl of time to cushion their falling chests, and the surety that there would be air in their lungs to lift them back up again. 

Later, they fell towards sleep, limbs pooled together, entwining and entombed in tangle-bound sheets. And as he drifted off in front of Eddie’s deep-dreaming face, mouth slightly ajar, Richie lay, full of love and other things, and listened to his breathing. Quiet, breathy puffs against his chin. Slow and even.

But there was a sound behind the breath. Richie’s eyelids fluttered to its beat, shuttering between darkness and occulting light. Focus drifting, floating, fading down to the lung-pump tune behind those lips. 

It was a steady rhythm. Metronomical. Methodical. Chugging and churning behind a cage of teeth, somewhere at the dark depths of his drainpipe throat. A pumping machinery, running on and on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo probably for the best im wrapping this fic up now, because, with that last chapter it was as though i were.... Manifesting things. for one, in the middle of writing out richie's fish tank dream sequence in ch.2, my mom woke up in the middle of the night to say she'd had a nightmare eerily similar in its imagery (she didn't know what I was writing at the time). &then, i coincidentally met up with a childhood friend, who ended up sharing some bagels & freshly farmed non-carton eggs (they were tasty ¬ not cursed tho). lastly, though absolutely not to the same extent as this chapter's (or even the novel's) flood, my hometown experienced potentially the worst storm destruction it has in recent years, phonelines and trees torn down and about haphazardly. so, all in all.... sufficiently spooked.
> 
> aaanywho, thanks for reading this far if you have!! really really appreciate ya. :')  
> it was nice to do some creative writing outside of comics again. reminded me how much i enjoy doing both! ...on that note tho i do wanna go back to comics for the time being lol. see ya l8r~!


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